Punk culture is currently having a revival worldwide and is poised to extend and mutate even more as youth unemployment and youth alienation increase in many countries of the world. In Russia, its power to have an impact and to shock is well illustrated by the state response to activist collective and punk band Pussy Riot. This book, based on extensive original research, examines the nature of punk culture in contemporary Russia. Drawing on interviews and observation, it explores the vibrant punk music scenes and the social relations underpinning them in three contrasting Russian cities. It relates punk to wider contemporary culture and uses the Russian example to discuss more generally what constitutes 'punk' today.

Punk culture is currently having a revival worldwide and is poised to extend and mutate even more as youth unemployment and youth alienation increase in many countries of the world. In Russia, its power to have an impact and to shock is well illustrated by the state response to activist collective and punk band Pussy Riot. This book, based on extensive original research, examines the nature of punk culture in contemporary Russia. Drawing on interviews and observation, it explores the vibrant punk music scenes and the social relations underpinning them in three contrasting Russian cities. It relates punk to wider contemporary culture and uses the Russian example to discuss more generally what constitutes 'punk' today.

This book dwells into the construction of new regional identities in post-Soviet Russia. Brought into being by a particular ideological practice, they constitute a particular response to the situation of social dis-identification generated by the dissolution of the USSR and the disappearance of the community of the Soviet people. The study focuses on two such concrete solutions, namely the ideological projects of the Kubanian Governor Nikolay Kondratenko and of the Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov. Drawing on the new theories of discourse, the research examines articulations of particular ideas of Moscow and Kuban, fixing the identities of 'Muscovites' and 'Kubanians' in the political discourse of the 1990s. The book investigates the new regionalities with relations to the legal and administrative privileging of the subject of the regional population. The study also looks into the hegemonic potential of the regional ideologies, their relevance to a wider programmes of social identification, and their subsequent history.