In the former Soviet Union, one finds a veritable preoccupation with cultural globalization. Many people – like Volkov, the Astrakhan official we met in the Introduction – tend to experience it as Westernization (or, often, as “Americanization”), which is widely understood as conveying a massive pressure for homogeneity. This in turn generates a powerful mix of emotions: excitement, pride, anxiety, and disgust. After all, the perceived trend of homogenization is perceived to carry with it a range of potentially positive and negative effects, both with regard to national integrity and autonomy as well as pedestrian, everyday matters. Left unmediated to intermingle with locally produced ideas and practices, therefore, global influences beckon with opportunity, but also with danger. As a result, strikingly ambivalent attitudes percolate up into social discourse, in the form of an intense engagement with globalization. In a variety of public forums people in all walks of life struggle to come to terms with the influx of foreign ideas, groping for their underlying significance and spinning out narratives of the future, upon which they project their hopes and fears for the nation. And naturally, such hopes and fears are especially vivid where they surface in the discourse of youth culture.

Disentangling the strands of social discourse

As the following sections describe, what we find in this discourse is a typical pattern of hybridization: selective absorption, rejection, and assertion of national identity constructs.