Youth Cafes in the USSR of the "Thaw" Period as a Sociocultural Phenomenon

Representing a new form of leisure activity, youth cafes played an important role in the social and cultural life of the USSR during the “Thaw”. Being created in the context of the Party-Komsomol policy, youth cafes were supposed to be under the Party control. However, they were the embodiment of a new communication format, which was not directly related to the officially set norms. In this research, on the basis of official documents, materials of the Soviet periodical press and memoirs, the emergence and functioning features of youth cafes as part of the informal public sphere that developed in the USSR during the years of the “Thaw” are examined. The study consists of three chapters. The first chapter presents the socio-political conditions that influenced the creation of youth cafes. The content of the second chapter is focused on the features and contradictions of the format of youth cafes, as well as on the problems of organizing these places. The third chapter takes a closer look at the four youth cafes in Moscow, which are studied as spaces of creative communication that contributed to the development of jazz and art in the USSR during the “Thaw”.