How zutsutiers, bosozoku, rudboys and other informals influenced the USSR and Russia: A Guide to the Little-Known Subcultures of the World

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In principle, everyone knows what a "subculture" is. And many will immediately give examples: hippies, punks, bikers, goths, who's next on the list? In fact, there were much more of them, and new subcultures continue to appear even today, in the era of social networks. We know absolutely nothing about some of them, but meanwhile they influence the world around us: fashion, music, cinema and even our language, into which words from street slang constantly slip.

Teddy fights

The very first subculture of rock and roll fans originated in England. In many ways, it was they who created the main canon of the "informal" appearance: "unusual clothes + unusual hairstyle + behavior annoying ordinary people."

Britain emerged from the war tired and lost its empire. Life around was clearly not played with bright colors - suffice it to recall that food ration cards on the island were canceled only in 1954. But from overseas, a stream of records with American rock and roll poured in, and among young people, the fashion for clothes in the style of King Edward VII (hence the "teddy"), which came from the student environment, spread. Long jackets or single-breasted jackets with velvet collars, tapered “pipe” trousers, narrow ties tied with a “Windsor” knot. On the head, with the help of grease, the same "cook" was built, which was borrowed by Soviet dudes and current visitors to barbershops.

In the provinces, not everyone had enough money for Edwardian chic, and there the image of a teddy boy was modified in their own way. The place of expensive jackets was taken by motorcycle leather jackets, and the character of Marlon Brando from the movie “Savage” began to make their own "teddies". They got involved in street fights and other funny stories easily and naturally.

After reading this description, you can easily remember the most famous "teddy fights" of all times and peoples. Of course, these are the early Beatles from the days when the "Liverpool four" were five and had not yet met Brian Epstein on their way.

In addition to teddy-boys, there were also teddy-girls or "Judyes" who developed their own style of clothing

Bosozoku

The Japanese answer to American bikers. It is believed that the first auto and motorcycle gangs in post-war Japan created former kamikaze who failed to go on their last flight. According to another version, the bosozoku were something like a "preparatory class" for the Japanese mafia - the yakuza.

The name comes from the mechanical combination of the words "bo so" ("aggressive racing") and "dzoku" ("family", "clan." “Baggy cloaks with the clan's emblem, dressed directly over the naked body, were considered.

But the main distinguishing feature was the branded tuning of cars and motorcycles, reaching the full grotesque. A 45-degree camber so that the wheel rims appear to "fly out" from under the car, elongated and curved exhaust pipes, a front-mounted oil cooler connected to the engine with a metal hose through a hole in the headlights - these are the hallmarks of the bosozoku style.

In the late 80s, the Japanese police were finally tired of street fights with stabbing and night races of roaring tuned monsters right under the windows of respectable townsfolk. After a couple of decades of harsh "zero-tolerance" pressure and the closure of the iconic bosozoku magazine Champ Road, the former army of "lawless motorcyclists" left an estimated 6,000 people who switched from motorcycles to bicycles.

An amazing fact: when, at the end of the existence of the USSR, we had our own motorcycle subculture, its representatives borrowed their appearance and style of behavior not from American bikers, but from bosozoku. Why it happened is a mystery, but just look at the photographs of rockers (as they were called) during Perestroika or at motor-gangs from perestroika films like "Crash-the cop's daughter". Ours, however, did not tune the motorcycles, confining themselves mainly to removing the muffler from the exhaust pipe, so that the roar was more terrible.

Rudboys

A culture of criminal youth from the slums of Jamaica's capital, Kingston. It developed around local street discos “sound systems”, and borrowed its name from the local popular cheap rum-based liquor “Rude to Your Parents”.

Clothing style: black mohair suits with ankle-length pants, bersalino hats or caps and obligatory sunglasses. The Rudboys borrowed their style of behavior from films about American gangsters, Westerns with Clint Eastwood and action movies about Agent 007. From music they preferred ska or a close-to-rockstaddy style with lyrics like “I just shot the sheriff”. If you want to listen to something even remotely similar - turn on the early "Leningrad".

The main occupation for most of the mine fighters was forced to become petty street crime - there was still no work in Jamaica. In the late 1960s, after six murders were committed by street gangs in just one summer, the island's government got tired of it. A total "cleanup" of Kingston began, fleeing from which many Rudboys moved to England

There they joined the ranks of local working youth, who clashed with fashions - a subculture of middle-class children. So, in the battles on the streets of British cities, skinheads were born, then they had not yet become neo-Nazis. Well, the most famous rudboy in the world eventually became Bob Marley, who returned to Jamaica and played a completely different music - reggae.

Suitsuits

If the lower part of their wardrobe - platform boots and trousers - "pipes", Soviet dudes borrowed from British teddy-boys, then these guys have the top. It all began during the Second World War, when the US government introduced austerity measures, mainly needed to make every inhabitant of the country separated from the flaming Europe by the ocean feel "mobilized".

"Yes, you go to …" - answered the colored population of large cities. I must say that he had every reason for that: the American system of racial segregation on some points left far behind even the "Nuremberg Laws" adopted by the Nazis. The first to introduce the “zoot-suit” style of clothing were musicians of big bands - restaurant jazz orchestras, where mostly black people played. Wide coats with lining under the shoulders, jackets elongated almost to the knees, colorful shirts and chains for watches and keys hanging down to the knees again became the answer to the demands to save material and donate excess metal for the needs of the front.

Following the musicians, the initiative was taken up by migrants from Latin America and Italy, who made the "zoot suite" style an integral part of the mafia "families" fighters. In the next decade, the southeast subculture faded away. So, when one of the characters in the Russian film "Hipsters" tells another that there are really no dandies in America, he just arrived there with a big delay and was looking in the wrong place.

Luber

The nightmare for all informal Moscow in the late 80s was "simple and strong guys" from Lyubertsy. Once upon a time, there was an ordinary satellite town, and then a base for the Olympic reserve in weightlifting was built in it, thanks to which the fashion for bodybuilding and bodybuilding prohibited in the USSR penetrated into the masses of the local courtyard punks. Once, the police drew attention to this unclaimed resource, deciding to involve "initiative Komsomol members" in dispersing a meeting of neo-Nazis on Pushkinskaya - and it began.

It turned out that a gopnik with an ideology is a hundred times more terrible than an ordinary gopnik. Lyuber came to Moscow and staged raids on places where those whom they considered "defaming our Soviet way of life" gathered: hippies, punks and so on. All those who did not have time to escape were fiercely beaten, at the same time stripping from them any paraphernalia that could be driven for good money to the cooperators. Lyuber's "uniforms" - the famous checkered trousers, were needed mainly in order to unmistakably identify their own people in the heat of a fight.

In the 90s, the movement came to naught by itself, having nominated cadres from its ranks for the future Lyubertsy organized criminal group. Mostly Lyuber left their mark on the culture - almost every group of classic Russian rock had a song dedicated to them. And of course they were sung by the directors of the perestroika cinema: “My name is Arlekino” (Valery Rybarev, 1988), “Luna Park” (Pavel Lungin, 1992), “Sideburns” (Yuri Mamin, 1990)

And in continuation of the theme rare photographs of the life of a hippie commune in the 1970s.