ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most important impetus to revival was the end of the Stalin era and the beginning of the Khrushchev era. As Tamara Livingston has argued, most musical revival movements take place ‘in opposition to aspects of the contemporary cultural mainstream.’2 The American folk revival movement of the post-war years was heavily involved with labor and leftist movements; only in the 1960s did it gain a more mainstream, commercial character. The Russian movement started as a reaction against Stalinist culture, but was never affiliated with any specific political agenda. Rather, during the Thaw period of the late 1950s and 1960s, when it became possible to discuss some of the mistakes of the Stalin era, intellectuals sought new sources of value. Some turned to the West as a reaction against the isolationism of the Stalin era. Urban young people became increasingly interested in jazz and rock music, foreign films, and Western clothing styles. Some intellectuals turned to Russian peasant culture as an important source of sincerity and authenticity in Russian culture, since it was presumed to have remained untouched by the hypocrisy and doublespeak that characterized Soviet public life under Stalin. Rural culture seemed like a possible place of refuge from a system that had become obsessed with industrialization at any cost.
