It might seem preposterous at first to refer to the Soviet Union as the “most punky country in the world.” But ever since the publication of the books by Timothy W. Ryback, Rock around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1954-1988 (1990) and Sergei Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985 (2010), we know that this assertion was not totally unfounded. Soviet musician and rock singer Vladimir Sigachyov made the above mentioned comment in a 1988 interview with Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Vronsky and selected by Christian Werkmeister to be the title of his work about informal youth culture during the late Soviet Union. A lot of books, articles, and memoirs published since the decline of the “Red empire” impressively show that Soviet culture of the 1970s–80s stood in stark contrast to the sedulous pronouncements of Soviet officials, who depicted it to be “progressively socialistic” and “free from the toxic influence of decadent Western culture.” On the contrary, constantly growing elements of Soviet youth, searching for new cultural experiences, made it necessary for local officials during Leonid Brezhnev's last decade to find reasonable compromises. As a result of this “negotiation process,” a blossoming and vivid rock-and-punk-scene, steadily balancing on the edge of legality, was rooted not only in big cities such as Moscow and Leningrad, but in the periphery well as, where the implementation of cultural guidelines of the Central Committee were more lax.

One central merit of the study by Christian Werkmeister, which originated as a PhD dissertation on the University of Jena, is showing the attempts made by Soviet agencies, which were in charge of implementing youth politics, to deal with the new phenomena of heavy metal and punk- and-rock scenes mushrooming across the country since the mid-1970s.

What comes to light is that Komsomol (communist youth league) activists as well as the representatives of other central and local authorities recognized the boundaries of their influence pretty well. They showed a willingness to accept the existence of “open spaces” for rock or heavy metal subcultures as long as forms of self-expression displayed by their members were not too blatantly anti-establishment and did not challenge the ruling Marxist-Leninist ideology. Given the tendency of punk to be deliberately non-conformist in fashion and their preference for loud and aggressive rock music, it is not surprising that these specific individuals were often considered a thorn in the side of Soviet power and were therefore persecuted more often than fans of “normal” hard rock. The author made the decision to structure his thesis chronologically following the last four Communist General Secretaries’ terms in office. This decision can only be described as successful and cogent.

It is particularly welcoming that Werkmeister did not treat Yuri Andropov's and Konstantin Chernenko's short tenures in office as an a priori negligible transition period from Brezhnev's stagnation to Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Instead, he underscores the importance of these three years as a separate period of Soviet history as the new leaders began to give it another turn of the screw that stood in contrast to Brezhnev's policy of avoiding confrontation and conflicts. The informal and half-legal subcultures were among the first to feel the force of the newfound aspirations to purify Soviet society of “harmful influences of disgusting western pop culture” and to weed out all manifestations of “unregulated and anti-socialist behavior.” These efforts culminated in the publication of a “black list” on October 1, 1984 containing the names of more than seventy western bands and musicians like the Sex Pistols, Village People, and Pink Floyd, whose music was instantly banned and forbidden. The “grey areas” of Soviet everyday life tolerating the coexistence of official and unofficial culture during Brezhnev's last years disappeared. The local cadres were urged not just to implement the center's orders, but to be proactive and show increasing self-initiative while fighting for the “party's general line.” This hard policy lasted unabated for two years after Gorbachev's coming to power. Werkmeister's study provides several impressive examples of the persistence of old conservative views on “proper youth culture” until 1990, when the new epoch of history began.

Even though Werkmeister's book is not free from errors or misunderstandings and remains too vague in its statements at various points, it is a solid scientific achievement that hopefully will be deepened by other studies.