The Image of the West in USSR During the Era of Stagnation

This research focuses on the image of the West in the Soviet Union. The author sequentially analyzes various subjects of Soviet uncensored culture, in which there is an image of the West, conducting anthropological and semiotic analysis. Based on the concept of the late Soviet era of Yurchak, the research examines in more detail the role of the West and West in the Soviet Union, explaining how the “West” participated in shaping the perception of everyday life. This reseacrh uses sources from several groups. Almost all of them relate to the cultural life of the USSR. This is fiction, bard music, folklore. Ego-documents are also involved in the study, but they are more likely to play an illustrative role. They confirm the conclusions made on the basis of other groups of sources, but their number does not allow us to put them to the forefront of the study. Therefore, the conclusions drawn in this work concern a rather narrow layer of Soviet intelligentsia. Exploring the Soviet West as an interpreter of the signs (objects) of everyday life, I also trace the historical reasons that influenced the formation of a complex of the "imaginary West" in Soviet society.