Alternative Notions of Dissent: Punk Rock’s Significance in the Soviet Union and East Germany

The punk movement arrived in the late 1970s in the United States and United Kingdom, creating non-traditional and experimental ways in which to produce music. As the movement grew it developed a foundational ideology geared towards a more inclusive civil society. With globalization, some scholars viewed the international movements as derivative from the founding American and British movements. However, its arrival in the Soviet Union and East Germany, two regions that faced mass social and political repression, serve as two counter models to the idea of the derivational international punk movement. Taking on the foundational ideology of the American and British punk movements, the Soviet Union and East Germany created the Soviet Punk and Ostrock movements. Both movements incorporated aspects of their unique political environment and cultural mythologies. Within these two movements emerged two foundational bands Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Omsk, Siberia) and Zwitschermaschine (East Berlin and Dresden). Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Zwitschermaschine served as examples of a revolutionary civil society, non-derivational punk movement, and the beginnings of societal perestroika in the Soviet region