Zagranitsa

rdf:langString Zagranitsa

rdf:langString Zagranitsa (Russian: заграница, IPA: [zəɡrɐˈnʲit͡sə]; transl. "across the border" or "abroad") refers to the real or imagined world beyond domestic borders and, during the late Soviet period, to an idealized, imaginary West that lay beyond the borders of the Soviet Union. The concept of zagranitsa influenced Soviet life and culture from the 1950s until the 1980s. It manifested itself in a widespread fascination with Western manufactured goods, films, music, fashion and ideas. Alexei Yurchak, in his 2006 book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, describes zagranitsa as an "imaginary elsewhere" that was "simultaneously knowable and unattainable, tangible and abstract, mundane and exotic". 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 America— 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".