Western culture influenced Soviet life and culture in many ways. From the 1950s until the 1980s this influence was manifested in a widespread fascination with Western manufactured goods, films, music, fashion and ideas. This fascination was condemned by the Soviet authorities and was described as "idol worshiping the West" (идолопоклонство перед Западом / idolopoklonstvo pered Zapadom) and similar phrases.
The informal word zagranitsa (Russian: заграница, IPA: [zəɡrɐˈnʲit͡sə], "the abroad")[a] refers to the real or imagined world beyond domestic borders of the Soviet Union and, during the late Soviet period, to an idealized, imaginary West that lay beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. Alexei Yurchak, in his 2006 book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, describes the perception of zagranitsa by the Soviet people as an "imaginary elsewhere" that was "simultaneously knowable and unattainable, tangible and abstract, mundane and exotic".[1] The idea of zagranitsa as utopia, at once an aspiration, a negation, and a reflection of the Soviet Union itself, became embedded into Soviet culture and identity.
Once travel to the United States became more accessible with Perestroika, the "imaginary West" lost its mythical connotations, resulting in disappointment and disillusionment. As Svetlana Boym writes of the 1985 hit song "The Last Letter" (also known as "Goodbye Amerika") by Russian rock group Nautilus Pompilius, bidding farewell to the United States— that is, "the beloved Amerika of Soviet underground culture… the mythical West of the Russian imagination"—was as painful as bidding farewell to Soviet culture itself and the "utopian fantasy land of one's youth".[2]
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