Chernov’s choice

Published: July 25, 2008 (Issue # 1393)

First they forbid you to dress as you like, then they forbid you to say what you think and, finally, they forbid you to think altogether.

But punks, goths and emo kids have proved they can get organized when their rights are endangered — at least in Krasnoyarsk, where a reported 200 representatives of various youth subcultures, some with their mouths taped with Scotch, went to a rally on Saturday to protest the State Duma’s attack on what certain deputies see as “dangerous teen trends.”

The deputies’ “concept for the spiritual and moral education of children” includes curfews and the banning of emo and goth fashions from schools. (See page v).

“The protest was not even caused by the statutes included in the proposed law, such as the banning of fashions in schools or whatever, but the wording — absolutely insolent and false — used by the people who created it,” said Krasnoyarsk musician Andrei Skovorodnikov, one of the rally’s organizers.

Skovorodnikov, the frontman of punk band Paranoya and Angedoniya, spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by phone on Thursday.

“Emos, goths and the other subcultures that have never been destructive are accused of every possible sin, starting from being anti-social and finishing with equating them with the most aggressive youth gangs. They were almost called ‘extremist’,” he said.

The attack by Russian lawmakers follows an attack by the police when young people were reported to have been beaten and arrested near Sokolniki metro, a hangout for punks, goths and emos, in Moscow in April.

In the Soviet Union, the police stopped persecuting punks and hippies in the late 1980s as Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policies advanced.

“We are simply returning to sovok [a derogatory term referring to the Soviet Union and its ways of handling things],” Skovorodnikov said.

“That’s what is usually called sovok — when real deeds are substituted by empty gestures. Instead of going to young people and finding out what is on their minds and what they want, finding out what these emos and goths are, these agile deputies start to dictate, indiscriminately, how one should live, how one should dress and so on.

“The government always want people to be a gray and obedient mass, rather than a group of personalities that stand out. Anything that stands out makes such people anxious. That’s why such a clampdown on subcultures is underway.”

In Krasnoyarsk, slogans on the protesters’ posters invoked the title of a song by late Siberian musician Yegor Letov dealing with totalitarianism (“Kill the State in Yourself”) and “Man, His Rights and Freedoms Shall Be the Supreme Value” (a line from the Russian Constitution).

In St. Petersburg in February, 73 young fans of Letov who gathered to mourn him were arrested for improbable minor offences.

— By Sergey Chernov