The Paradoxical Role of the Shanson in Putin’s Russia

What is it about?

This study analyzes the colorful phenomenon of the Russian shanson in the context of contemporary Russian culture and politics. It targets shanson’s complex symbiotic relationship with Putin’s regime and its paradoxical place within Russian culture and politics today. The shanson musical genre has undergone a veritable sea change over time, evolving from a subcultural form mocking official powers to a “normalized” cultural product that now bears the Kremlin’s stamp of approval. Faced with the new post-Soviet economic reality, the underworld song underwent changes that transformed it into a commercially successful genre currently acknowledged, and even deployed, by the Russian authorities. While such shifts often mark a subculture’s lifecycle, what is particularly striking in this case is the shanson’s continued bond with the underworld. Such a paradox, I contend, may be illuminated, if only in part, by the specific nature of Putin’s cultivated public persona and particular features of the Putin regime.

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Why is it important?

My analysis briefly covers the merchandizing of the shanson— its progression from a subcultural expression to a commercially successful vein of contemporary music—and then delves into a few of many possible manifestations of a paradoxical quid pro quo synergy between the shanson and Putin’s politics, especially examining the incorporation of the shanson into official discourse of the Putin era’s. My research demonstrates that in Russia, where the difference between the authorities and criminals is not always easily distinguishable, the shanson genre has been enjoying the privileges that the current regime has granted to it. In other words, while many shanson celebrities openly support Putin’s regime, the latter employs the form as a tool for accomplishing its political agenda. I argue that such collaboration between the Russian authorities and the musical genre in question, both grounded in the codes of the criminal world (poniatiia), demonstrate the coalescence and overlap of the Putin state with the Russian underworld as well as the latter’s prominence in Russian culture.

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