Banned in the USSR: counterculture, state media, and public opinion during the Soviet Union's final decade

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the connection between social and cultural aspects of history, specifically concentrating on the phenomenon of counterculture as a measure of civic reaction to the political climate and its impact on social institutions. With the totalitarian Soviet regime during the decade of its disintegration as its subject, this study intends to show that a degree of cultural pluralism and public dissent can exist even in the outwardly culturally withdrawn, ideologically dogmatic, and politically repressive societies. The central focus of the examination rests on the relationship between the state-controlled printed media and the public sentiment of the Soviet youth, and the ways in which the official press and the dissident counterculture interacted in the years surrounding the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s democratic reforms and the subsequent demise of the Soviet state. The investigation is conducted mainly through the analysis of the primary sources, represented by a cross-section of the printed media of the period, as well as memoirs and interviews of the participants of the events, the author’s personal experience, and secondary sources, devoted to the phenomenon of the sub-cultural “underground” in the USSR. The examination displays the eminent role of mass information as both a tool of propaganda and a measure of public opinion, and accentuates the part that cultural deviations played in the political process. The evidence shows the conflicting reactions towards the ongoing social changes and increasing cultural diversity, and highlights the divergent approaches to the information management that existed within the seemingly uniformed institution as the government-controlled Soviet media apparatus. As this study considers the significance of the interests, leanings, and sympathies of the youth on the overall historical development, it ascertains that even the presumably marginalized and maligned social and cultural movements can emerge as powerful factors in the discourse between the state, the media, and the public within the milieu of political restructuring.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Boris Von Faus