Gopniks: history and customs. Russian gopniks have captured the European consciousness

In today’s post I want to talk about the “Gopnik” phenomenon. This phenomenon is quite common among young people today. Unlike the well-known youth subcultures that dominate the media, Gopniks today are real shape socialization of most of the youth, mainly from the lower strata of the Russian provinces. This phenomenon cannot, strictly speaking, be attributed to youthsubculture in its classical sense. This is more likely a type of worldview and lifestyle of young people than definite shape youth subculture.
In a study conducted Tyumen State Oil and Gas University has identified several versions of the origin of the concept of “Gopniks” . According to one, it comes from thieves' slang word"gop-stop", meaning robbery, armed raid. According to another, the origins go back to the little-known slang expression “gopat” - to wander without a specific goal. There is also a version that the name of this youth group comes from the word “gopa” - shelter, which, in turn, comes from the abbreviation GOP (city hostel of the proletariat). Rural youth moving in search of better life to cities in the first years of Soviet power, settled in such establishments, giving them a bad reputation.

Development of the "Gopnik" movement has two fairly clearly distinguishable periods: the 20s and 90s of the last century. The periods of emergence and revival of “Gopnichestvo” are associated with turning points in the development of the country and are a consequence of a systemic crisis. Today the term is becoming public knowledge mass consciousness, and the phenomenon is considered extremely broadly, up to the inclusion of all segments of the population of modern Russia in this marginal youth movement.

An important characteristic of any social group is self-identification . A person who shares the values of gop culture is called a “kid” or a “normal kid” by gopniks. Thatthe fact that the word “gopnik” is not used in this social group (at least for self-identification) indicates its origin from the outside. The choice of the word “boy”, which in Russian is synonymous with the words “boy” and “teenager”, seems interesting.

If, for example, informals with their name emphasize non-compliance with the standard, difference from others, gopniks show that they are ordinary, normal, the way everyone should be. For the gopnik of one of highest values is belonging to a group. The primary group is the only social niche in which he can realize himself, receive recognition and respect for courage, integrity, loyalty to comrades - positive human qualities that society outside this social group does not notice or value. A group of comrades represents for a gopnik a primitive, but at the same time real (attainable) system of values, which boils down to the formula “be like everyone else, don’t oppose yourself to the group.” Only within these narrow limits can a gopnik realize his individuality. Any, even the most “heroic” act means nothing if it happened without witnesses or without approval from the reference group.

Sociological research has confirmed the spread of the Gopnik movement in the Russian provinces, Moreover, it is widespread among adolescents and young people belonging to the period early youth. Thus, only 12.7% of schoolchildren surveyed responded that they knew nothing about gopniks; Among students at colleges and vocational schools, this figure was 23% (data needs clarification); As expected, parents of teenagers turned out to be the least informed - 28% of them had not heard about such youth. The majority of respondents not only know about Gopniks, but also communicated with them; a significant proportion are in contact with this group. Moreover, from an analysis of open-ended questions, it is clear that approximately a fifth of male adolescents express sympathy for this youth, or admit that they belong to it.

TO characteristic features Gopniks respondents cited the following: a)group cohesion based on common interests; b) dominant orientation towards material values; c) jargon formed on the basis of the “Zonov” language, containing a large volume of specific concepts that are common in places of detention and have gone beyond their boundaries, as well as obscene language; d) respect for individuals who have experience serving sentences in places of deprivation of liberty; e) intolerance, aggressiveness towards representatives of other youth groups; f) cult of physical strength - brutality.

The participants in the group discussion defined the concept of “gopniks” as follows: “bandits”; "organized criminal group"; "a group of young people with their own point of view"; "a group of young people with their own philosophy"; "drug addicts". The origin of the term is connected, according toin the opinion of respondents, with the concept of “gop-stop”, which reflects the main focus of the activities of gopniks - extortion under any pretext. As a rule, mobile phones and money are extorted. By philosophy or “point of view” of Gopniks we mean non-recognitionlaws of the country and society, focus on street robbery, and not on getting an education and earning money with one’s own labor, lack of self-realization in other generally accepted forms of life. Intolerance was also noted towards representatives of some youth subcultures, primarily such as punks and informals (“nefors”).

External features modern gopniks and features of their behavior described by focus group participants through following signs: a) mandatory: sports suit, eight-piece cap, short haircut, seeds; b) the desire to unite in large groups(up to 10 people) and demonstrating one’s own “authority” by appealing to physical strength; c) communication with representatives of other youth groups is aimed at inciting conflict (at “divorce”) with the aim of subsequent accusations of “wrong” behavior, in order to begin extortion and move on to physical aggression; d) extortion today is focused primarily on obtaining mobile phones and money; e) can control areas of the city, and young people who belong to the Gopniks or have acquaintances among them can move freely throughout the territory of a given area.

The general scenario of conflict communication with gopniks is as follows: searching for a reason for conflict (“do you have two rubles?”, “what about a cell phone?”); increase in verbal aggression; finding reasons for conflict and the beginning of aggression (they offer to go to a “convenient” place); actual extortionand/or beating. The young men had experience in communication, one of them explained his position when interacting with gopniks: do not enter into conversations, knowing their purpose, and immediately move on either to conflict, or try to avoid all communication - to run away. Ambiguous positions in the opinions of respondents were revealed when explaining the increased aggressiveness of gopniks in relation to punks and informals. Most of respondents pointed to distinctive features of these youth groups in appearance: long hair, outrageous clothes, etc.,which irritate the gopniks, who have completely different elements in their appearance, rather indicating brutality. Another group of discussion participants, among whom were young men who had personal experience of communicating with gopniks, believe that their intolerance is not connected with any motives for not accepting the subculture of other youth groups, but is caused only by the desire to acquire material means through extortion, “the main thing is profit.” .

A significant portion of respondents noted the connection between gopniks and representatives criminal communities, which is manifested not only in the borrowing of linguistic cliches, but also in a number of rules and norms governing the behavior of group members, in the desire to imitate persons with experiencebeing in places of detention - “they have an “authority” that distributes responsibilities.”

Participants in the discussion believe that gopniks include males, ranging from adolescence to middle and older age. The majority of respondents note that, being students aged 5–7classes, knew nothing about Gopniks, but from the age of 16 they began to receive information about this group of young people. Such wide age limits are explained by the fact that people classified as gopniks, according to respondents, have only two paths in life: the first is growing up,accept the norms of society and leave the group, the second is to establish yourself in the group, which will entail further immersion in the “world of crime.” Nevertheless, respondents agree that gopniks are, as a rule, young people. The unanimous opinion was that gopniks include only males. However, it was noted that even among girls, sometimes the interaction has a character inherent in the Gopnik style of communication. However, emphasized masculinity this youth movement can be considered a fact.

Currently, the phenomenon of gopniks is insufficiently studied does not allow you to give a definite answer to the question whether they are carriers of a special youth subculture (counterculture),a chaotically emerging community of teenagers predisposed to committing delinquent acts, or are we dealing with an established youth movement.

Of course, the phenomenon of Gopniks cannot be attributed to youth subculture in its classical sense. This group is strongly influenced by the criminal subculture, manifested in particular in the languageideas about norms and values, behavioral characteristics. The laws of the criminal world largely determine the Gopnik’s worldview, but if the group’s values come into conflict with “thieves’ concepts,” the Gopnik will not hesitate to act “out of line.” It would be wrong to equate the criminal subculture with gopniks. Gopnik is distinguished by his ability to take direct action; he does not reflect. The individuality of the Gopnik is a myth, for the Gopnik who realized own individuality, automatically drops out of the group. The social danger of the Gopnik phenomenon is not fully recognized by contemporaries, since these youth do not manifest themselves as an active reactionary group, like, for example, skinheads. The essence of the Gopnik worldview is an aggressive denial of cultural values: high leveleducation, interethnic tolerance, work, the desire for self-improvement and adherence to ethical standards. Gopniks - marginal current with blurred ideas about social, moral, legal norms. The essence of a gopnik is an unformed personality, unwilling and unable to make a choice of his own life strategy. Estimates of the scale of "Gopnichestvo" today are quite difficult, but about its prevalence V region can be judged by the self-identification of 30% of the youth surveyed. DepthThe social consequences of this phenomenon in the Russian provinces will apparently be felt in the near future, when a new generation of matured gopniks turns into voters, part of hired workers in regional labor markets, etc. Necessary means youth policy to prevent the possible connection of new generations of Russians with the Gopnik subculture demonstrated today on the streets of provincial cities.

Prepared from the material: Gavrilyuk, V.V. Gopniks as a phenomenon among young people // SOCIS. - 2010. - No. 1. - pp. 126-131.

The Gopnik subculture is notable for the fact that it appeared in the USSR, although, in fact, Gopniks- This is a layer of working youth from low-income families, and similar layers can be found in literally any country at one time or another. Eg, British punks 1930s (not to be confused with the punk subculture of the 1960s-1970s), about which you can read more in the article on punks. However, domestic gopniks are a truly unique phenomenon.

There are several versions of the origin of the word “Gopnik”. According to the first of them, the term appeared on turn of the 19th century- XX centuries, and the situation was like this: in St. Petersburg a State Charity Society was established, where street children who were involved in theft and hooliganism were placed. Perhaps the word “gopnik” began to be used in relation to these same street children. Another option: in the building of this State Society, after the revolution of 1917, the Civil Hostel of the Proletariat was organized, which was used for the same purposes as the previous society. In both cases, the word “Gopnik” comes from the abbreviation of these institutions. Another version says that the word “Gopnik” comes from thieves’ slang. According to this version, gopniks were thieves who were engaged in gop-stopping (following the example of other criminal “specializations”: a pickpocket - a “tweezer”, a murderer - a “mokrushnik”, etc.). Some argue that “Gopnik” comes from the abbreviation “citizen of dangerous behavior.” However, in all these cases, a gopnik is any antisocial type with thieves' habits. The Gop subculture became especially acute in the 1970s and 1980s. Gopniks declared themselves in numerous fights with the then Soviet informals - punks and metalheads. Since then, the word “gopnik” has firmly entered our vocabulary.

Among the musical preferences of Gopniks are criminal chanson, rap and low-grade pop music. Gopniks cannot imagine their collective walks without listening to their favorite music. Soviet gopniks listened to music on battery-powered cassette recorders. Gopnik, who carried a “mafon” with him, was held in special esteem among the “Kents”. Nowadays, gopniks listen to music from mobile phones. The current gopniks are passionate fans creativity of such groups as “Factor-2”, “Gaza Strip”, “Butyrka”, “Leningrad”, “Casta”, “Malchishnik” and performers Noggano, rapper Syava, etc.
So all the signs are there separate subculture Gopnikov - their own ideological principles, musical tastes, your own style of clothing, as well as an incomparable style of behavior. Low level moral and aesthetic development, low spiritual level Gopnikov determines appropriate behavior. Young people who want to live “by the rules” put on a “clean” tracksuit and go drink beer with the “lads”. And the saddest thing is that the number of such people is not decreasing at all.

As it is written in the article, the appearance of Gopniks did not present any difficulties for the readers of the newspaper: these are these Russian guys of the “don’t put your finger in your mouth” type with pimply skin and stupid faces, which reflect only one thought: “I’m screwing you!”

"These guys are more comfortable squatting than standing. But, most importantly, they are the last males on planet Earth who can wear leather gangster caps from the 1920s with style - everyone else in such caps looks like only fagots from drama school rehearsing some musical,” the newspaper writes.

Gopniks are cool because there is no place for self-irony in their world. They are very "authentic". Proof of this is their fantastically adventurous tastes: a mixture of bad taste, menace and garish Third World chic. Even the fact that Gopniks like to blast techno at full blast, sing shitty karaoke songs in cheap cafes with color music, or wear cheap pointed leather boots to match their 1920s ragtime-style pillbox caps cannot take away their status as the most dangerous. scum in the world.

History of the word, culture of gopniks About the word: there are few terms that one hundred percent correspond to the designated object. "Gop" sounds angry, stupid and funny, but not so funny that you dare to laugh in the face of a gopnik. The word "Gopnik" is based on the abbreviation: "State hostel of the proletariat." Add to "G.O.P." the suffix “nick” - and the new biological species is ready.

Gopniks appeared after the revolution. The first gopniks came to Petrograd in the 1920s in search of work. By origin, they were peasants or completely landless scum.

The species "common gopnik" even had its own specific habitat - Ligovsky Prospekt, building 10. Actually, this is a hotel, now called "Oktyabrskaya", and the gopniks, in their own way, turned it into a collectivist gangster club, the publication writes. Since they were outsiders in their villages, often children from single-parent families, and many already had petty crimes on their record, if not something worse, the indigenous population of Petrograd, and then Leningrad, treated the gopniks with disgust.

They went down in legends as thugs and lucky ones, whom even the Soviet system could not break. They had their own code of honor, they lived by their own rules, they had their own tattoos on their fingers, their own fashions. They represented something like a caste of “thieves in law” in the world of delinquent “hooligans”.

Later, the meaning of the word changed, and the expression “gopnik” meant any dubious type with a shaved head, wearing a thick leather jacket, stupid leather boots and a pillbox cap.

1990s - the rise of Gopniks

In the 1990s, it seemed that Gopniks would soon take over, if not the whole world, then at least one-sixth of the land. "Gopniks ruled the roost in all 11 time zones of Russia. "Gopniks - or Russian men, who adopted the style of Gopniks, surged into all spheres of life, from “business”, where they played the role of sixes, to politics, where, as deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, they formed the core of the resistance Western influence", the newspaper writes.

Some gopniks exchanged leather jackets and sweatshirts for brown blazers from Hugo Boss, but could not resist complementing this splendor with shiny mules: gold chains on their hands and necks, fancy watches and so on. The Gopnik culture in the 90s was accompanied by techno music. However, the 1990s turned out to be not so much the rise of the Gopnik Nation as the Beginning of its End.

Have Gopniks survived to this day?

To explore the culture of modern Gopniks, the newspaper's correspondents went to Lyubertsy, a city that in the 1990s was known as the capital of Gopniks. Criminality was as common there as tracksuits and sunflower seeds. Imagine the surprise of the journalists when they could not find any gopniks there. Then the representatives of the newspaper decided to go to one of the most sinister areas of Moscow, Brateevo, but they didn’t find any gopniks there either.

What happened to the Gopniks? Most sources agree that two factors contributed to their extinction. First: in the 1980s and 1990s, hard drugs and weapons suddenly became widely available. Their introduction into such a fearless and primitive culture as the Gopnik culture meant that in one decade almost half of the individuals left for another world.

"The second reason has more to do with changes in the environment. The advent of Western bourgeois values and cultural preferences, as well as the beginning of a period of external stability, growth and sobriety under Putin, means that Gopnik's 70-year reign as the king of the world of rebels has suddenly come to an end: Russians of all social classes layers quickly hated the dork aesthetics of the Gopniks,” the newspaper writes.

Nothing speaks more eloquently about the tragic disappearance of Gopnik from the face of the earth than the fact that Shnur is from the Leningrad group, big fan Gopnik culture, is going to open the “Gopnik Museum” in his native St. Petersburg, the newspaper notes. Shnur's group romanticizes the Gopniks to a middle-class audience that has finally come to appreciate them, albeit in a semi-ironic spirit that would not have been possible if the Gopniks had not disappeared. Even the original cradle of Gopniks - house 10 on Ligovsky Prospekt - today is nothing more than a three-star hotel.

Anatomy of a Gopnik

A pillbox cap is a key element of a Gopnik's outfit. Leather ones are for serious murders, stripes are for all sorts of trifles like rape in the country.

Ears - usually protrude more than those of ordinary homo sapiens, thanks to fights, as well as the indispensable haircut to zero.

Shashlik - Gopniks (like all Russians) believe that meat tastes best when it is roasted on a stick over a fire.

Sweatpants still remain the most ergodynamic for squatting.

Shoes - Gopniks prefer a) pointed leather boots or b) slippers, but as they assimilate culturally, they sometimes wear sneakers.

Glass - everyone knows that vodka tastes best when it is served warm in a glass. plastic cups. It is very important that several midges float on its surface.

Jacket - if he had a bumper sticker, it would say "Don't think Leather Jacket I have".

Forehead - convex frontal lobes are inherited from distant ancestors - humans.

This article was translated
Shall we honor?

For several months now, our foreign readers have been pestering us with the question: “Who are the gopniks?” They have vague ideas about the appearance of gopniks thanks to our Face Control section: they say, these are Russian guys of the “don’t put your finger in your mouth” type with pimply skin and stupid faces, which reflect only one thought: “I’m screwing you!” These guys are more comfortable squatting than standing. But, most importantly, these are the last males on planet Earth who manage to wear leather gangster caps from the 1920s in style - everyone else in such caps only looks like fagots from drama school rehearsing some kind of musical.

Gopniks are cool because there is no place for self-irony in their world. Whatever, you can’t take away their “authenticity”. In an era when “authenticity” is the most valuable and rare quality, Gopniks occupy the top rung of the hierarchy of coolness in the world. Proof of the authenticity of the gopniks is their fantastically courageous tastes: a mixture of bad taste, menace and the loud chic inherent in the “third world”, the impudence of which even the most avant-garde-avant-garde of Western “advanced people” would never dream of - in their bourgeois white hands it will instantly turn harmless kitsch. Even the fact that Gopniks like to blast techno at full blast, sing shitty karaoke songs in cheap cafes with color music, or wear cheap pointed leather boots to match their 1920s ragtime-style pillbox caps cannot take away their status as the most dangerous. scum from among the white population of the whole world.

But the story of Russia's gopniks is not a straightforward hymn to a form of authentic cool that the bourgeoisie has not yet discovered. On the contrary, this is a tragedy worthy in its scale great literature. Like Faulkner's Old South or Tolstoy's fading landed gentry, Russian gopniks- the heroes of a tragic tale about a dying breed of people who were once so proud of themselves.

Charles Portis notes that when a guidebook refers to a people as “proud,” it is usually a euphemism for “more beasts than men.” As for the gopniks, they really hardly reach people, and this is precisely their obscene charm. Take the word “gopnik” itself: there are few terms that one hundred percent correspond to the object being designated. "Gop" sounds angry, stupid and funny, but not so funny that you dare to laugh in the face of a gopnik. This word is also fun for a private trip - when you are safely barricaded in your car, the windows are up, the doors are locked, your foot is on the gas pedal, and your children and wife are screaming in horror: “Just don’t stop at red!”

How and when did the Gopnik culture arise?

The word "gopnik" was not a witty invention of the poet. At its core, as at the core of many other wonderful Russian words, is the abbreviation: “State hostel of the proletariat.” Add to "G.O.P." the suffix “nick” – and the new biological species is ready.

And he was born, according to the legends, after the Bolshevik revolution. According to the most reliable sources that we have (and this is the opinion of the vocalist of the Leningrad group Shnur), gopniks came to Petrograd in the 1920s in search of work. By origin, they were peasants or completely landless scum. They spilled out of trains in droves and, with luck, found refuge in newly rebuilt hostels, where they became the first local ghetto gangstas of Soviet Russia.

The species "common gopnik" even had its own specific habitat - Ligovsky Prospekt, building 10. Actually, this is a hotel, now called "Oktyabrskaya", which the Soviet authorities made a hostel for visiting proletarians, and the gopniks, in their own way, turned into a collectivist gangster club. Since they were outsiders in their villages, often children from single-parent families, and many already had petty crimes on their record, if not something worse, the indigenous population of Petrograd, and then Leningrad, treated the gopniks with disgust. They went down in legends as thugs and lucky ones, whom even the Soviet system could not break. They had their own code of honor, they lived by their own rules, they had their own tattoos on their fingers, their own fashions. They represented something like a caste of “thieves in law” in the world of delinquent “hooligans”.

Over time, when the specific fashion, slang and worldview of gopniks spread among the lower classes of the country's population, the meaning of the word changed. Now the expression “gopnik” meant not a tough country guy from the building where the Oktyabrskaya Hotel was later located, but any dubious type with a shaved head, wearing a thick leather jacket, stupid leather boots and an immortal pillbox cap. The same could be said of any guy who squats in the yard, dressed in a tracksuit and slippers, sipping Zhigulevskoye from his throat and husking sunflower seeds, and sometimes yelling at his wife to shut up, because she has no worries no - just know that you take the child for a walk in a used Turkish stroller, which he stole from someone else's house...

In the 1990s, it seemed that Gopniks would soon take over, if not the entire world, then at least one-sixth of the land on our planet. Gopniks ruled the roost in all of Russia's famed 11 time zones—from the lobby of the now-demolished Intourist Hotel just a couple of hundred meters from Red Square to the commercial-kiosk-lined embankment in Vladivostok and every geographic location in between. Gopniks - or Russian men who adopted the Gopnik style - surged into all spheres of life, from business, where they played the role of sixes and cannon fodder, to politics, where, as deputies from the LDPR, they formed the core of the resistance to Western influence.

The whole nation became gopniks: shaved heads, stern faces that read: “I trampled the zone!” and an extraordinary gift for choosing the most tasteless clothes, no matter how much they cost. Some swapped leather jackets and tracksuits for brown Hugo Boss blazers. But they could not resist the temptation to complement all this with shiny mugs: gold chains on their hands and necks, fancy watches, which, for all their authenticity, glittered with gold so much that they seemed more like a penny Vietnamese counterfeit. The most remarkable thing is that the 1990s were echoed by the perfect gopnik soundtrack: shitty techno, thundering non-stop from every restaurant, every shawarma kiosk, from every Lada or stolen Mercedes, from every hotel room adapted as an office ". No matter where you went in Russia in the 1990s, there was simply no escape from bad techno.

But no one realized then, and even today only a few realize, that the 1990s were not so much the rise of the Gopnik Nation as the Beginning of its End.

Last weekend we decided to organize a Gopnik Safari - a field anthropological expedition to introduce you, eXile readers, to the world of Gopniks. We asked our Russian friends where the best places to go to observe Gopniks in their natural habitat. The advice was very different: “Yes, there are plenty of them everywhere!”, “Go to any Russian city at random!”, “You don’t even need to leave Moscow: get off the metro at any station outside the ring line, and they will find you themselves.”

The most interesting answer was given by our journalist Vika Brook, who once wrote the Generation Elitny column for us: “Hit off to Velikiye Luki. “Big Heads of Luka.” Like all of my relatives live there - my aunt works at a textile factory, her my alcoholic husband cousin Maxim - he is a security guard, my other cousin Alexey - he is also a security guard, at a bank, and my cousin Natasha - she is divorcing her husband, he is a scoundrel and a slacker, my uncle Alexander - he sells Chinese shoes at the market, and his son Alexander - he serves in the army, and his second son Eduard - it’s generally unclear what he does. In general, I don’t give a damn about Gopniks - all my relatives are Gopniks.”

Alas, Bolshie Golovki Luka is located in the Pskov region, and we needed something closer. Among the cities of the Moscow region, none can compete in terms of gloomy reputation with Lyubertsy, a working-class suburb in the south of Moscow just on the other side of the Moscow Ring Road. In the 1990s, Lyubertsy was known as the capital of Gopniks. Criminality was as common there as tracksuits and sunflower seeds. One girl, born and raised in Lyubertsy, and in the early 1990s moved to Moscow, told us: “All the guys I knew there were gopniks. If you go there, you’ll probably see them everywhere, but I can’t say for sure.” “I haven’t been there since.” When we asked if she could call one of her childhood friends, she said: “I can’t. Almost everyone died, some from drugs, some were shot, some were stabbed to death. The rest got out of there and changed their place of residence, as I. I don’t know anyone else there.”

Early on Saturday evening we went to Lyubertsy by taxi. It was hot outside, hotter than usual at this time of year. We reasoned this way: although some of the gopniks are probably relaxing near some depression where toxic industrial waste splashes (referred to locally as a “beach” or “lake”), we will see enough individuals squatting at kiosks and in courtyards for our anthropological aspirations to come true. But we did unexpected discovery. We drove slowly through the center of Lyubertsy, expecting to see, if not fresh corpses - material for our Death Porn column - then at least blood stains, indicating recent events of this type. But in reality, the city turned out to be... uh... let someone hit us in the face with a wet fish for what we are about to say, but the city turned out to be... uh... quite... still pleasant, in the spirit of a family idyll. Shady streets, lots of greenery, clean sidewalks, strolling couples and families. On one stretch of one of the central streets we counted at least four Japanese restaurants, as well as several standard restaurants of the Rosinter and Torgovie Tsentri chains, partitioned into cages for hamsters.

True, in Lyubertsy there were fewer mega-expensive foreign cars, but there were plenty of inexpensive ones. Even the Lada cars were neat and clean. We came across only one Lada with tuning in the style of a “disco car” - with flashing red lights. If America has Rice Rockets, then this Gopnik Nation must have its own Shawarma Shuttles. However, we noticed a single Shawarma Shuttle in a whole sea of bourgeois cars. There was no point in walking around Lyubertsy. If we want to find Gopniks, then we must think like Gopniks. Where will they go? To the park! And not just to the park, but to that place in the park where plastic garden furniture is arranged around a kiosk spewing raucous 1990s techno. This is, in the language of the Gopniks, a “cafe”. Hm...

Let's not drag out our story. We found the park. And a "kafe" with plastic garden furniture too. We took some beer. We sat down. And we will fall through the ground if we saw at least one gopnik around us during the entire time we were chilling there. Actually, the kafe was very civilized: techno wasn’t loud, the beer was cold, the visitors didn’t pry into other people’s business – and there were even a couple of indie goths among them. At first we began to complain at the top of our voices, sad that we were left without material. But then disappointment began to turn into anxiety. What happened to the Gopniks? Maybe they all went somewhere for the weekend? Or is the weather too hot for them? Or did they leave Lyubertsy for better places?

We decided to leave the civilized "kafe" and walk through the park, among a sad collection of rusty Soviet-era children's attractions, which lacked only a sign: "If you wish to have an abortion, although all deadlines have passed, put the child in a chair on this attraction, move away , give us five rubles and we will do the rest." In the park we noticed a group of topless men playing tricks at the horizontal bar. But, coming closer, they realized that these were not Gopniks at all, but Caucasians, “black-assed”, the diametric opposite of Gopniks. After wandering around Lyubertsy for several hours, we finally gave up. If there are no gopniks here, where can we look for them, motherfucker?

Then we chose one of the most sinister districts of Moscow, Brateevo, whose very name is synonymous with the concept of “gopnik”. This is one of the remote areas where every square inch of land is lined with 17-story white panel houses - huge, nightmarish, built from dirty white concrete slabs. When you approach Brateevo along the Moscow Ring Road, it seems that the panel houses are stuck there so closely and chaotically that it is unclear how you can squeeze between them - the sun probably doesn’t shine here and all the vegetation has withered. But, alas, not all that glitters is gold.

And again, armed with beer and heading into the very shit, we found ourselves face to face with someone much worse than brigades of squatting gopniks - among hordes of people who had nothing in common with gopniks. And again families, baby strollers, good cars, teenagers dressed in the new fashion - sort of pop goths, beautiful girls walking their dogs. In fact, Brateevo became so cosmopolitan that, although we deliberately spoke loudly in English, no one paid any attention to us. Even the stray dogs ignored us. All that remains is to look into the local billiard room. If there is anywhere to look for Gopniks - at least one fragment of antiquity - then only there. Well, guess three times who we didn’t find there.

If you follow the Russian blogosphere, it will seem to you that gopniks are so omnipresent in Russia that they are about to multiply beyond all limits, pour across borders and take over China. Everywhere you look, on sites they mock Russian gopniks or ridicule them so zealously that it already turns into glorification. We should have known in advance, based on our Western experience, which happens whenever advanced people discover some "authentic" lower class subculture. Consider that the subculture is dead, died, gone to dust. Actually, this is the meaning of our article: we want not only to introduce the world to Gopnik, but at the same time to inform about him, Gopnik, tragic death. Because as soon as something so cool comes into fashion, expect disaster.

The second reason is more related to changes in habitat. The advent of Western bourgeois values and cultural preferences, and the beginning of a period of external stability, growth and sobriety under Putin, meant that the Gopnik's 70-year reign as the king of the rebel world came to an abrupt end: Russians of all social classes quickly came to hate the Gopnik's loutish aesthetic. The Russians were ashamed of the Gopniks and looked at them with disgust, and only a year or two ago, when it was too late, they realized that the Gopniks were a great national treasure, the “Russian idea” in human form, the only ones who did not stoop to showing off.

Once upon a time, young Russian "cool" people romanticized gopniks, but now they take their cues from rappers (preferably white ones). The neopatriots of the Putin era also no longer need Gopniks, although Gopniks have always been the most ardent Russian patriots. In the Putin era, patriotic young people look more European, dress more European, listen to music in European and even American style. The only vestige of the Gopnik gene is that even the most quasi-Western-looking young Russian guy (or young Russian girl) carries in his heart the classic Gopnik worldview: blind chauvinism, anti-Americanism, hatred of dark-skinned people and, of course, a penchant for Gopnik antics on flights." Aeroflot", where even the richest and most well-traveled Russian turns on recessive gopnik genes, forcing him (her) to dress up in a tracksuit and slippers, sip Moskovsky cognac, sing songs loudly and lean over the neighbors' chairs - if not fall on the neighbors themselves .

But just as the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex turned into a pigeon through evolution, right before our eyes the rapid degradation of Gopnik is taking place, his transformation into a creature that can only be called “a skinny guy with a runny coke, who appears to everyone as a brand manager, and in fact, he works at the Euroset kiosk, where he managed to pocket enough money to buy a used Nissan Almera, which he loves more than anything in the world.”

Nothing speaks more eloquently about the tragic disappearance of Gopnik from the face of the earth than the fact that Shnur from the Leningrad group, a big fan of Gopnik culture, is going to open a “Gopnik Museum” in his native St. Petersburg. Shnur's group romanticizes the Gopniks to a middle-class audience that has finally come to appreciate them, albeit in a semi-ironic spirit that would not have been possible if the Gopniks had not disappeared. Even the original cradle of Gopniks - building 10 on Ligovsky Prospekt - today is nothing more than a three-star hotel, where a night in the cheapest room costs $100.

As in the case of Faulkner's Old South and Tolstoy's dying noble landowners, we glorify and mourn the Russian gopniks only today, when it is too late, and they can only be for us aesthetic objects, symbols of a bygone era that was much purer than ours, not suffered from complex irony and deeply secondary cool, an era where there was no dull office life, which is increasingly dragging Russians into the Putin era.

What do politicians say about Gopniks?

Oleg Lavrov, head of the Moscow branch of the LDPR:

“We believe that Gopniks are the most powerful political force in Russia. People laugh at us, call us a party of marginalized people: Gopniks, thieves, tramps and drunkards. But, you see, these are all people whose interests no one else represents. We created our points at railway stations, and at one time we had a million members. When we nominated Malyshkin as a presidential candidate in the 2004 elections, people were shocked. Well, yes, he, of course, is not an intellectual, but the gopniks will vote for him."

Anatomy of a Gopnik

A pillbox cap is a key element of a Gopnik’s outfit. Leather ones are for serious murders, stripes are for all sorts of trifles like rape in the country.

Ears - usually protrude more than those of ordinary homo sapiens, thanks to fights, as well as the inevitable haircut to zero.

Shashlik - Gopniks (like all Russians) believe that meat tastes best when it is roasted on a stick over a fire.

Sweatpants still remain the most ergodynamic for squatting.

Shoes - Gopniks prefer a) pointed leather boots or b) slippers, but as they assimilate culturally, they sometimes wear sneakers.

Glass - everyone knows that vodka tastes best when it is served warm in plastic cups. It is very important that several midges float on its surface.

Jacket - If he had a bumper sticker, it would say "Don't think I have a leather jacket."

Forehead - convex frontal lobes are inherited from distant ancestors - humans.

In contact with

Classmates

Back at the end of the 2000s, having toured the seedy outskirts of Moscow, reporters from a foreign magazine “sounded the alarm”: the famous gopniki had disappeared somewhere. Instead, the courtyard benches and park cafes are filled with peaceful inhabitants, and if anyone “goes wild” for no apparent reason and drives tuned Ladas, it’s the Caucasians.

And this spring, apparently missing the colorful 90s, some domestic enthusiasts proposed to immortalize Gopnik in stone in his “homeland” in St. Petersburg. Is this once powerful caste dying out and did it really give birth to it? cultural capital Russia? Anews decided to figure it out.

Revolution: before and after

About 100 years ago the word “Gopnik” could really only be heard in Petrograd. At first, this was the name given to ordinary homeless people and tramps, who before the revolution were occupied by the City (or State) Society of Charity (from the word “prizor”, not to be confused with “contempt”), abbreviated as GOP.

Classic wearers of sweatpants and caps from the 90s and 2000s have little in common with their pre-revolutionary “namesakes”:

These were representatives of the lower classes, but not necessarily bad guys and criminals. They begged and engaged in petty theft due to circumstances, inspiring pity rather than threat - in contrast to hooligans, whose habits were exactly reminiscent of a modern scumbag: they formed gangs, wandered around the streets, bullied passers-by, took things from them (the same bags with seeds) and extorted money, threatening to beat me.

However, after 1917, the “good old” gopniks were crowded out by the lumpenproletarians - essentially the same declassed elements, but thoroughly imbued with the idea of “taking everything away and dividing it up.” Having been replenished with these comrades, the layer of gopniks matures, becomes criminalized, and becomes actively dangerous.

If Bulgakov's Sharikov had lived not in Moscow, but in St. Petersburg, he would have completely passed for a typical post-revolutionary gopnik:

For some time the word remained purely St. Petersburg, but acquired a sharply negative connotation. Although Soviet authority abolished the charity society, two more places in Petrograd and Leningrad were called GOPs: the largest flophouse-brothel on Mezhdunarodny (now Moskovsky) Avenue and the city hostel of the proletariat on Vosstaniya Square. Their inhabitants - Gopniks - no longer evoked disgusted pity, but hostility, ridicule and fear.

U modern fashion different, same faces:

After the war

Until Gopniks became a truly large-scale phenomenon, Soviet punks ruled the courtyards and districts. Accidentally driving into the wrong lane, often even during the day, any passer-by risked running into greyhound thugs ready to crush his sides just for being a “stranger.”

The street gangs were at odds and brutally beating each other. Some provincial cities became real arenas of military operations, where the only thing that could save you from a sudden attack by “enemies” was a walk with a girl. But the police did not deal with the punks, because they did without criminality and did not maintain strong ties with crime.

80s

Only in the 80s, with the flourishing of youth subcultures, gopniks were revived and established themselves in their lower classes. Representatives of different movements could conflict with each other, but everyone was united in contempt and hatred for the gopot, which was distinguished not by ideology, music or fashion, but by a stupid rejection of everything that is not “like everyone else.”

In those same years, the “informals” had a more serious enemy - the Lyubera. People from a factory environment, zealously pumping their muscles in the basements of Lyubertsy near Moscow, made forays in crowds into fashionable places in the capital and beat those who outraged them appearance and behavior.

Unlike gopniks, whom no one ever wanted to imitate, lyuberas with shaved heads, strong biceps and simple morals quickly gained popularity among residents of the city outskirts.

Luber winter fashion: wide plaid trousers, T-shirt with Stallone and fur hat.

The habit of instilling their concepts of “normality” with the help of fists involved basement bodybuilders in increasingly severe showdowns, and by the beginning of the 90s, many of them formed the backbone of well-known organized crime groups.

The founder of the Medvedkovskaya organized crime group Grigory Gusyatinsky (Grinya, far left) and Orekhovsky authority, USSR champion in powerlifting Sergei Ananyevsky (Kultik, far right):

90s

If the former lyubers were promoted to crime bosses, then the gopniks of the 90s finally found something like ideals - a set of ideas about how “clean boys” should look and behave.

They have a great honor for the habits of gangster sixes and prison “romance”, because even the most shabby individual is allowed to rise in the eyes of his own kind. Hence the favorite way of selecting “valuables” (money, cell phones, etc.) from passersby - gop-stop, and the tradition of squatting: also a tribute to the idols from the zone.

The gopnik fashion and lifestyle have become a favorite object of ridicule for everyone else, while the gopota itself - perhaps the only subculture - is absolutely devoid of self-irony.

Real gop couple in the subway:

Our days

In recent years, politicians have armed themselves with the offensive word “gopnik” and throw it like clods of dirt at opponents and the “redneck crowd.” It goes either to Ukrainian figures, or to Putin’s entourage, or to Maidan activists, or to Russian jingoists. Now, it turns out, this “expletive” can now be awarded to any rabid in its “rightness” and aggressive groups.

But what about the classic gopniks - they went down in history along with the 2000s?