Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures

This study analyzes the colorful phenomenon of the shanson in the context of contemporary Russian culture and politics. It targets the shanson's complex symbiotic relationship with Putin's regime and its paradoxical place within the national consciousness. This musical genre has undergone a veritable sea change over time, evolving from a subcultural form mocking official powers to a normalized, commodified cultural product that now bears the Kremlin's stamp of approval. Faced with the new post-Soviet economic reality, the underworld song underwent mutations that transformed it from a subcultural expression to a commercially successful vein of contemporary music currently acknowledged, and even deployed, by the Russian authorities. While such shifts often mark subcultures' lifecycles worldwide, what is particularly striking in this case is the shanson's continued bond with the underworld. It is this study's claim that such a paradox arises from the specific nature of the Putin regime and from Russian society's particular mode of existence, in which both the population and the state have internalized the norms of the criminal world. The current analysis briefly covers the development of underworld music, from folk songs about criminals and rebels in the early period in Russian culture (seventeenth century) to the merchandising of the shanson in the 1990s, and then delves into manifestations of an incongruous quid pro quo synergy between the shanson and the president's politics, especially examining the genre's incorporation into the official discourse of the Putin era. My research demonstrates that in Russia, where the difference between the authorities and criminals is not always easily distinguishable, the shanson has been enjoying privileges bestowed on it by the current regime. In other words, in today's crime-ridden Russia, the shanson has found an officially approved home.

Committee: Helena Goscilo (Advisor); Ludmila Isurin (Committee Member); Jennifer Suchland (Committee Member); Robert A. Rothstein (Committee Member) Subjects: Slavic Studies