Sovietwave: The sound of Soviet nostalgia

Artwork by Randall Mackey (2017). The billboard translates to “Our Dream!”







How did we get here?

YouTube recommendations are weird. Somehow I went from listening to Fly Me to the Moon featuring Patrick Star riding a seahorse, to tumbling down the rabbit hole that is ‘Sovietwave’. You might have found Sovietwave in a similar way; it seems to be how most people find the peculiar genre. No one actually searches for it, but everyone stops and has a listen, to then find themselves enamored by this dreary and weirdly comforting style of synthpop. Some stay for the music, others admire the Soviet artworks present in the thumbnails. However, underlying all of this is a collective sense of Soviet romanticism and nostalgia for the future: wondering of what the Soviet Union could have been. It’s strange. Have a listen.





What is Sovietwave?

Sovietwave is a subgenre of ‘New Wave’, a musical style that originated from the 1970s, borne from the rise of synthesisers, punk rock, disco and electronic dance music. Sovietwave features elements of these, with more attention given to the sounds of post-punk from the 1980s. However, what defines Sovietwave the most is its distinct colourless sounds and Russian lyrics. According to most people’s reactions to the genre, this unique sound, accompanied by artworks of Soviet propaganda invoke feelings of “nostalgia for a future that never arrived.”





Where did Soviet nostalgia come from?

This made me curious. Why would people be nostalgic for a totalitarian regime that resulted in the deaths of millions of people? After all, western education will tell you that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was the greatest thing to ever happen to the Russian people. It was the downfall of communism! Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first president, stated after a failed coup in August 1991 that “the Russian people had ‘thrown off the shackles of seventy years of slavery” and were on their way to a “parliamentary democracy” (Izvestiya, 23 August 1991, p. 1). Except, what followed wasn’t so good. When you read about the political, social and economic struggles of the three Slavic republics (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) you begin to understand.

In 1991, the new ruling group of the Russian Federation consisted heavily of elites that had previously held administrative positions in the Soviet Union. Soviet-era historian Tat’yana Zaslavskaya (2004) argues that this group had effectively completed an anti-bourgeois coup “begun by Stalin in the late 1920s but not taken to its logical conclusion.” Zaslavskaya (2002) continues by suggesting that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was more of an evolution than a revolution. There was no “people power” to stop the anti-bourgeois coup; everything that had happened was led by a dissatisfied intelligentsia that had no substantial power against the former ruling group. What followed was a reduction in the Russian welfare state; economic instability; and public criticism of democracy’s bureaucratic shortcomings. A 2005 study by the Levada Centre saw half of its participants claiming that “it would have been better if everything had stayed the way it was before 1985” because “we were a big, united country”; “there was order”; “there was certainty in the future”; and “prices were low and stable.” The collapse of the Soviet Union had brought economic insecurity and cultural disillusionment. Even now, Russia still faces political uncertainty and a less-than-favourable economy. Some people are now looking at Soviet Russia and are thinking: maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea? We could try it again, this time with “more democratic” elements and a different plan. As Anya Fedotova, a photo editor from Russia interested in Soviet nostalgia says: “People were in a difficult situation in Soviet Russia, but they believed in the bright future of the USSR.”

Soviet nostalgia is a result of the comparison between the Soviet Union’s strengths and the Russian Federation’s weaknesses.





Soviet nostalgia in the age of the Internet

Okay, cool history lesson, but how does Sovietwave come into this? Sovietwave is a product of Soviet nostalgia. It’s a product of comparing the USSR’s strengths to the Russian Federation’s weaknesses. Nostalgia for the USSR gained popularity with the launch of the 2004 TV channel, Nostalgia TV, a channel dedicated to the music, movies and shows of the 70s and 80s. It’s also a product of this comparison. Since then, Nostalgia TV has now become a YouTube channel and online radio stream. It features a program called Before and After, which is all about people reminiscing on significant events that occurred in the Soviet Union. Sovietwave is no different. This new synthpop genre is all about reminiscing on the past, and thinking of what could have been if the Soviet Union wasn’t so corrupt and if it hadn’t dissolved. If history had been different, the USSR’s future could have been very bright. “Our Dream”, was to become an advanced civilisation leading space exploration and colonisation. This is why so many people on the Internet are becoming obsessed with Soviet aesthetics: “nostalgia for a future that never arrived.”

This all started because I watched a video of Patrick Star riding a seahorse.