Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre

The Russian shanson can be heard across the country today, on radio and television shows, at mass events like political rallies, and even at the Kremlin. Yet despite its ubiquity, it has attracted almost no scholarly attention. Anastasia Gordienko provides the first full history of the shanson, from its tenuous ties to early modern criminals’ and robbers’ folk songs, through its immediate generic predecessors in the Soviet Union, to its current incarnation as the soundtrack for daily life in Russia. It is difficult to firmly define the shanson or its family of song genres, but they all have some connection, whether explicit or implicit, to the criminal underworld or to groups or activities otherwise considered subversive. Traditionally produced by and popular among criminals and other marginalized groups, and often marked by characters and themes valorizing illegal activities, the songs have undergone censorship since the early nineteenth century. Technically legal only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the shanson is today not only broadly popular but also legitimized by Vladimir Putin’s open endorsement of the genre.

Anastasia Gordienko is an assistant professor of Russian and Slavic studies at the University of Arizona.