Tag: Comrades’ Courts

Before the West was Cool: Soviet Hipsters in the 1950s

I first discovered the stilyagi of the fifties when I saw a movie on Kanopy called Hipsters (2008). Set in 1955 Moscow, the film follows a Komsomol member who falls in love with one these stilyagi. A term for nonconformist, Western-oriented youths, the word stilyagi carried a highly negative connotation in Soviet society. Bonus: Listen to a song about hipsters (written by hipsters) while…