Soviet Nostalgia Now Has Its Own Soundtrack
From brutalism to Stranger Things, Western pop culture is full of nostalgia for Cold War aesthetics and lost futures. Young people in ex-Soviet countries have developed their own version, Sovietwave — a music genre that summons up the spirit of the space age.
Like other forms of retrowave, Sovietwave is punctuated by feelings of lost innocence and regret, in this case about the fall of communism. (Eugeny Chekhov)
If they’re feeling nostalgic, the children of the Soviet Union can voyage to the past via the portals of YouTube, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp. Programmed drum machines map out their journeys, wavy synthesizers illuminate their memories. In an instant, the play button brings back a world that lingers in their minds and in their lives — a world that vanished almost overnight.
Back in early 2020, during the uneasy feeling of Germany’s first lockdown, Stuttgart-based musician Michal Trávníček was killing the hours by doing what we all have done — spiraling down a YouTube hole. As fate had it, the algorithmic gatekeepers led him to a mix of songs by various artists under a curious banner: Sovietwave.
The music, matched with pictures of Soviet-era architecture, immediately brought back memories of growing up in a khrushchyovka in Bohemia, then a region of Czechoslovakia. Drifting into the electronic soundscapes, Trávníček envisioned himself on a park bench, watching classic Škodas and Ladas drive by, the badly dressed 1980s teens with mullets hanging around, and babushkas shuffling along with their grocery shopping.
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