Stiliagi and Soviet Masculinities- A Conversation with Alla Myzelev

In the Soviet Union, youth fashion meant more than just a way of expression. In our latest episode, we discusswith Alla Myzelev about the stiliagi, a flamboyant youth subculture that emerged in the late Stalinist and early post-Stalinist Soviet Union.Myzelev situates the stiliagi not simply as fashion-conscious rebels, but as a distinctly embodied and aesthetic form of dissent that challenged dominant socialist norms of respectability, discipline, and masculinity.Through their brightly coloured clothing, enthusiasm for jazz, and stylised modes of self-presentation, stiliagi exposed the fragility of Soviet ideals of the “proper” socialist male citizen. Rather than overt political opposition, their subversion operated through taste, leisure, and the body,revealing how cultural practices could quietly unsettle authoritarian norms even in highly regulated societies.

Part I of the podcast emphasizes how gender andsexuality complicate standard readings of youth subcultures as purely liberatory. Myzelev stresses that stiliagimasculinities were both transgressive and ambivalent: while rejecting militarised postwar Soviet masculinity, they often reproduced hierarchies through consumerism, serial relationships, and the objectification of women.