Russian gopniks. Russian gopniks have captured the European consciousness

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 only like fagots from theater 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 Gopnik style - surged into all spheres of life, from "business", where they played the role of sixes, to politics, where, as deputies from the LDPR, they formed the core of resistance to 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 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 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.

IN English language There is such a word as privacy*. In the Russian language there is something completely different - gopnik. The meanings of both are almost impossible to convey to native language, it’s generally useless to translate. But both words characterize some kind of...

There is such a word in English privacy*. In the Russian language there is something completely different - gopnik. The meanings of both are almost impossible to convey in one’s native language; it is generally useless to translate. But both words characterize some kind of unique environment. For example, they have complete freedom of movement - at any time and in any direction. This is privacy. We have a passport regime, registration, “detention until clarification.” This is absolutely legal bullshit. And it is impossible to combine these two concepts. They are mutually exclusive.

Behind recent years We gave one hundred gopniks two definitions. Vagrants, beggars and petty thieves. These formed the backbone of the poor committees who dispossessed the peasants. For them, on the site of two Petrograd hotels, the Bolsheviks opened the “City Hostel of the Proletariat” (abbreviated as “GOP”). It's 1920.

Poorly educated youth of the city outskirts, the LDPR electorate, driving tuning “nines”. They gnaw seeds at the entrances, litter on the sidewalks, hate visitors from the CIS, engage in petty racketeering, wear pointy shoes and drink strong beer from plastic cups. It's already the 90s.

Both of them, as is commonly believed, no longer exist. The concentrate of gopniks from the beginning of the century, according to legend, was destroyed by the Soviet government, with difficulty dissolving them into the mass of decent citizens. The same thing happened with the gopniks of the 90s, the bastards of the transition period - this is how stability under Vladimir Putin affected the stratum. But it would be stupid to say that in both cases the bullshit was over. Gopnik just disappeared into the crowd, changed into new clothes and got behind the wheel of another car. The masses, in turn, acquired some of his signs. Gopnichestvo itself has ceased to denote a narrow group of people; now it is a character trait of every person. And the key properties - lack of understanding of the boundaries of personal freedom, that is, privacy, hostility and even the lack of self-irony - are now inherent in everyone.

But for some more, for others not. Someone is almost a gopnik, and someone is almost decent. Who, for example, is my friend, the sweet-looking young accountant Roman, I still don’t know. In his red Peugeot, he gave way to pedestrians. An hour later, he knocked off the rear-view mirror from a neighbor’s car in the parking lot and drove on. For the birthday of our mutual friend Sergei, Roma books a table at one of Novikov’s restaurants and gives him some vague Mexican bamboo. And an hour later, after a little friendly banter over the gift, he hits Sergeyev’s face with all his might. Finally, Roma complains about the dominance of migrants. And then he convinces us that Estonia is the only Nazi country in the world.

Gopnichestvo has a different appearance and new habits. Using Roman as an example, we have compiled instructions on how to recognize a modern Gopnik, what signs and differences he has from his predecessors.

*Privacy- designation of immunity privacy, personal freedoms of a person and their boundaries established by law.

Gopnik and Gopnik

The Gopnik of the 90s did not understand the meaning of the word “Gopnik”. The concept was used only outside the Gopnik layer. In this sense, G. were designated as a kind of closed subculture like punks, skinheads or goths. But unlike them, the G. did not assign any names to the rest of the population (among the punks and Goths, ordinary citizens were “civilians”). Moreover, G. did not recognize the difference between themselves and other people. Modern representatives of this stratum very often use the concept of G. in relation to newcomers, the unemployed, politically indifferent people, and persons without higher education. This is what Roman does, being a native of Kabardino-Balkaria. With G.'s inherent intolerance, Roman despises everyone who is like him.

Note:as a synonym for G. Lately“redneck” is used: “office redneck”, “redneck from the Caucasus”, “fashionable redneck”, etc.

Gopnik and privacy

The last thing Roma will think about is the interests and comfort of those around her. Roma doesn’t seem to know at all about other people’s interests. Therefore, he easily throws cigarette butts out of the window onto the heads of passers-by. Before buying the car, Roma had never given up his seat to women or elderly people on the subway. And then - your own parking spot on the sidewalk. If Roma had a dog, he would take it to the toilet on the playground and wouldn’t even think about grabbing a bag. For Roma, there is only his own privacy, although he does not know what it is. And he always provides it at the expense of others.

Gopnik and clothes

Pointed shoes bought at the market, sports suit and the cap with a short visor are becoming a thing of the past. Shopping centers With European clothes There are now in every district of Moscow and other million-plus cities. G. joined the casual style: casual jeans, shirt, sneakers. But at the same time, the element of bad taste has not gone away: modern G. fell in love with cheap chic and pretentiousness. An inexpensive T-shirt must have rhinestones, sneakers should have sparkles, preferably in a golden hue. Under the (specially) unbuttoned shirt, again with rhinestones, there is a thick chain. In the summer, instead of shorts, young G. wear jeans rolled up to the knees. And it is impossible to understand what the goal is being pursued here.

In general, any thing should give off pathos, this is fundamental - with a suit for 5 thousand rubles. Be sure to wear bright cufflinks. Clothes should not only look chic, they should shout about it. Hence G.’s painful desire to buy fakes famous brands. Our Roman has a large golden plaque with the inscription Prada on his belt. In the passage on Pushkinskaya such a thing costs 700 rubles. (“The fashionable redneck” wears the original, but the badges are still the same - golden and huge.)

The Zara chain of stores is very popular among Roma. Despite the long lines, Roma has no favorite store. For 15 thousand rubles. there you can dress from head to toe. Moreover, things according to external signs very similar to the range of more expensive brands. If you stick big Armani letters to some jeans, you won’t be able to tell them apart at all. Zara has been accused of piracy more than once. But how can you refuse such a wonderful niche?

Gopnik and non-Gopnik

Unlike his predecessor, modern G. strives to be like a non-gopnik. Roman communicates at work with the most different people. But close contacts are difficult to achieve, which irritates Roma. His inability to joke and generally understand irony repels ordinary citizens. It is also impossible to convince Roma of anything. Like any G., Roma speaks out on any topic and does not recognize alternative opinions. So a dispute with Roma is considered an invasion of his privacy zone and, most likely, will end in an invasion of yours. In a conversation, he likes to touch his interlocutor with his hands, thereby emphasizing the idea. When you start talking, Roma will immediately get distracted by his own affairs, stare at the phone or turn on the radio.

Gopnik and power

In general, G. is extremely apolitical. But G. has his own opinion about power. If our Roman went to the polls, it was only because his colleagues and friends went to the polls. Although Roma doesn’t care about the interests of those around him, conforming to the infidels is his main idea. Despite this, Roman cannot be trusted because of his voice. Power, in his opinion, cannot be so complicated. It should be specific, clear, but not directly affecting Roma himself. The president has such power, for which every G. sincerely loves him. At the same time, G. despises all its other representatives. And he is afraid of specific ones - the police, tax authorities, etc. Unlike the president, they can always apply their direct and obvious power to G.. But Roma, like a normal G., does not accept this.

Gopnik and patriotism

Gopnik and civic activism

Young G.'s apoliticality can always be overcome. The only important thing is to publicly share his views. Now several political forces are doing this at once - starting with the DPNI, ending with the more decent ones - the Young Guard and Nashi. But among the DPNI and “Nashi” there are too many actual G., whom Roman avoids whenever possible (see Gopnik and Gopnik). Therefore, in his favorites on this moment"United Russia".

Gopnik and the law

Nobody follows the laws, for this reason Roman does the same. Corresponding, as it seems to him, to the masses. He often gets behind the wheel drunk. Doesn't consciously fasten his seat belt. Another thing is that when he was once hit in the ass at a crossroads, Roman changed his manners somewhat. But I still haven’t learned to obey the laws - this can only be forced. That is why G. so dislikes power in the person of specific executors (see Gopnik and power). By invading G.'s unlimited privacy, they force him to change his views. And for self-confident G. there is nothing more terrible.

Gopnik and music

Here Roman has gone far from G. of the previous decade. Instead of techno and chanson - R&B and Britpop. Roma also knows the lyrics to “A Star Called the Sun” and “Oh-Oh.” And it’s already better than techno. But something doesn’t give me peace. Some kind of hesitating song between the tracks “Verv” and “Radiohead” “Wait, where am I going?!” girls from "Star Factory". A little more - and now they are playing “Don’t Go Crazy” by Timati, “Don’t Be Born Beautiful” by Yulia Savicheva...

Still, it would be better if he listened to techno with chanson.

Gopnik and the church

Probably nothing warms Roma more than the Orthodox faith and solitude in church. Baptized of his own free will at the age of 20, he visits the temple every six months - at Christmas and Easter. There you can be yourself, away from all these intellectuals selling Christ. Without hesitation, take out a massive cross from under your shirt with rhinestones. And, if you have the patience, listen to what the fathers have to say.

One Christmas I met Roma with three canisters in front of the temple on Sretenka. Bypassing the service, he greedily loaded holy water into the trunk.

Verbatim

Masha Gaidar, leader of the youth organization “YES!”: For me this is synonymous with rudeness, impudence

For me, this is synonymous with rudeness and impudence. This is a person for whom no one exists around. He is absolutely not embarrassed to do what is convenient for him, although someone else may not like it. Gopnik is sure that he is always right. He proves that he is right only by force, because he knows nothing else.

Gopnik most likely had a difficult childhood. Problems in the family, difficulties with studies. He didn’t make it to university because he couldn’t and didn’t want to. Gopnik finds it difficult to communicate in company decent people, so he can only be seen among others like him.

Such people are now found in youth political organizations. This, for example, is the combat wing, so to speak, of “Nashi”. Not all “Ours”, only provocateurs who disrupt the actions and rallies of their opponents and destroy embassies. They act according to principles, and they don’t have to pay for it with sausages and glazed curds.

Alexander Belov-Potkin, leader of the DPNI: A declassed element prone to committing crude, graceless crimes

In my understanding, a gopota is a declassed element prone to committing gross crimes devoid of grace. Globally, gopota as a phenomenon manifests itself in a period of economic instability, when a large number of primarily young people cannot realize themselves in life, are cut off from their family environment and lead an asocial lifestyle. By gathering in groups, they create a certain subculture. She is not a “classical” criminal, since the gopot lives according to quasi-concepts.

IN modern Russia and in Ukraine, gopniks, as a rule, come from urban areas in rural areas, that is, they are not peasants or townspeople in the classical sense. Each of them individually can be a good person. However, due to the difficult situation in the regional centers, difficult financial situation parents, average or low intellectual abilities, lack of work and other sources of livelihood, young people try to survive together, sometimes uniting in semi-criminal communities.

If you try to draw a portrait of an average gopnik, it will be a man under 25 years old, dressed in clothes bought at the “Vietnamese” market, smokes tobacco, is not averse to drinking and scoring a joint, may be the owner of a VAZ 2108 car, a fake Swiss watch , most likely, has short hair, listens to outdated pop music or chanson, tries to talk “for life”, his face has a characteristic “country tan”, he can gnaw on sunflower seeds. Gopnichestvo has no nationality and is common among different peoples.

Gopnik attributes: cap, gold or silver chains, cheap signet, man purse, waist-length leather jacket. Insolent behavior, especially in a community of similar people. He may begin to find fault with words and appearance if he sees a “sucker” or “not local.”

Once in the early 90s, I came out of the metro with a girl, stopped to buy champagne at a tent and chocolate candies, then walked towards the house. Apparently, at the tent I “shone the shovel.” On the way through the square, I felt that someone was following us. He abruptly grabbed a bottle of Sovetsky from the bag and turned around. Two pairs of frightened eyes of Gopniks of Caucasian origin looked at me, one had a knife. A second pause - and they ran away.

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 goths of pop bottling, beautiful girls walking 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 wealth, a “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 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 Russian province. 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 the 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 specific purpose. 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 a gopnik, one of the 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, which society outside a given 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 the analysis open questions it is clear that approximately a fifth of male adolescents express sympathy for this youth, or admit that they belong to it.

To the characteristic features of 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 related 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 of modern gopniks and features of their behavior were described by focus group participants through the following features: a) mandatory: tracksuit, eight-piece cap, short haircut, seeds; b) the desire to unite in large groups (up to 10 people) and demonstrate 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 out the 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 communication with gopniks, they 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 resources 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 a 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. It is necessary, through 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.