ABSTRACT
Concentrating on the phenomenon known as 'the disco Mafia' in the large industrial cities of eastern Ukraine, and using archival documents, periodicals, personal diaries, and interviews as historical sources, this chapter will explore how the cultural practices of late socialism, especially the participation of Komsomol activists in Westernized forms of entertainment such as disco clubs and video salons, contributed to the commercialization of official Soviet culture and to the rise of capitalist entrepreneurship among the urban youth of Soviet Ukraine. Among Soviet audiences, the first images of organized crime in the capitalist West came from the movie screen, and more precisely from the American trophy films after the Second World War, such as The Roaring Twenties. In the middle of the 1980s, when perestroika created favourable conditions for the managerial skills of Komsomol activists to emerge, new activities for cultural consumption arose, in the shape of video salons.
