Zbigniew Wojnowski to speak on ' Pop Music from Stagnation to Perestroika: How Economic Reform Destroyed East European Cultural Networks '

On Tuesday, April 2, at 18.00 Zbigniew Wojnowski (Senior Lecturer, University of Roehampton London) will give a talk on “Pop Music from Stagnation to Perestroika: How Economic Reform Destroyed East European Cultural Networks.”

Abstract

The talk will explore the history of the Soviet bloc pop industry from a transnational perspective, focusing in particular on international Polish-Soviet concert tours organised between the late 1970s and the late 1980s. It shows how contradictory pressures of identity politics, cultural diplomacy, and profit fueled reform in the Soviet bloc. Particularly in the former USSR, but also in its satellite states, the last years of Brezhnev’s rule are often associated with stability and relative prosperity. In contrast, perestroika is remembered as a prelude to the 1990s, a time of economic hardship for Soviet and East European societies. My paper challenges these periodizations as it reconstructs the late 1970s and the early 1980s as a period of unease caused by the widespread belief that East European institutions were not working. It further identifies strong roots of enthusiasm for market reform under Gorbachev.

The talk will be given in English.

Address: 21/4 Staraya Basmannaia, room L-306

Start time: 18.00 

If you need a pass to HSE, please contact Nadezhda Nekrasova (nvnekrasova@hse.ru).