THE 1980’S DEMOGRAPHIC EXPLOSION SPLINTERS (ODVZ-80) OF RUSSIA Story by Andrei Love-Markov, translation by Anna Gerzhan
I’ll start from a far point – to be exact, from the very bases of The 1980’s Demographic EXplosion Splinters (ODVZ-80) doctrine, which has been developing by a group of young people since long-gone February 2003 (in its embryonic phase since April 2001) to the point, where, along with them growing, it got more complicated and comprehensive, embracing more and more life spheres.
Without trying to sound dogmatic and scientific, views of ODVZ-80 are mostly of a synthetic kind. They are appealing not to the, let’s say, features of an individual of the 80’s generation, but more to a deep analysis and interpretation of some of our common reality facts, that can be summoned and generalized.
So what exactly do we mean by saying Demographic EXplosion of 1980’s?
By the beginning of the decade Soviet Russia, the largest of 15 soviet republics, had a general birth rate at a level of 1.86 – the lowest in all of country’s history except for 1991 – when USSR, as we remember, collapsed.
However in 1981 a state monthly benefit to unmarried mothers was increased. A woman could count on this money till her child reached 16, or 18, in case a kid was still studying. Flat payments for giving birth were introduced as well. From now on a woman could get 50 rubles when having the first baby, 100 rub. – for the 2nd and the 3rd (keeping previous benefits: 65 rub. – for the forth, 85 – for the fifth, 100 – for the 6th and up to 250 rub. for the 11th and the following ones.
Reforms of the 1981, with the renewed law base on maternity and childhood social protection – long, partially-paid care leaves, and a range of other advantages, the first anti-alcohol campaign of a state secretary Andropov, showed the results already in 1982-1983, when the members of ODVZ-80 were born.
I’d like to notice, that from personal experience it’s okay to say that precisely these kids, born in the first and key-years of our shrapnel ODVZ-80 epoch, could be considered as the most ‘high-minded’ and ‘energy-charged’ part of the generation. Formally, any Russian-speaking peer, born between 1982 and 1989, can be referred to ODVZ-80. In fact, there are people who share pretty much the same values, without being born in the period stated above.
I should tell a bit more about Yuri Andropov and his personality. He became a state secretary in 1982, after Brezhnev’s death, and started to solve a country’s problems with a row of campaigns for simple order and work discipline. ‘Zero cycle’ of reforms healthened the economy pretty fast. Thus, in the first quarter of 1983 the volumes of production grew 6%, and in the whole ‘Andropov year’ – 4%. National income increased 3.1% in 1983 – though it was clearly a short-term effect. Back that time the burning questions were industry administration and a necessity to change the economical system to the multileveled one.
Yuri Andropov realized that light industry and service sphere are better when private. He was thinking of possible legalization of such business scheme. Andropov’s son, Igor, said later that his father was very much interested in Swedish economical model with its efficient system of dispersing national profits in favor of the poor and middle classes of population along with a well-developed system of social welfare. But actually Andropov’s views were tending more to a model of reforms, which was approved by Deng Xiaoping (who also happens to be one of the historical personalities highly-respected by ODVZ-80) and helped PRC to become a country with a constantly increasing importance in contemporary world.
Andropov was also aiming at partial decentralization of economy along with a better, i.e. financial, motivation of employees and companies in production intensification – without stepping aside from socialists values. To his mind, first it was necessary to re-organize agriculture and industry and only after achieving strong results come to democratization of political institutions. It should be said, however, that within 15 months of his being a state secretary 18 ministers were fired and 37 first district secretaries were reelected.
When it comes to foreign policy, Andropov, with all his will to compromise, couldn’t ease relationship between USSR and the USA. The crisis broke upon the decision of the US to place their mid-range missiles in Europe. The situation only grew worse with a fact that Soviet missiles of the same class didn’t carry any real hazard to the USA when ‘Pershing-2’ could reach our territories in 7 min and practically couldn’t be shot down.
Confrontation with China was still on and the Afghanistan war as well. A culmination of the tension was a tragic accident of September 1st, 1983, when Su-15 fighter-interceptor brought down South Korean Boeing-747 with supposed 269 civilians on board that entered USSR air space. One of the alternative versions of this tragedy says, however, that no body fragments were found at the place of a plane crash, but instead numerous pieces of trash, served as ballast, were spotted all over. Putting the ultimate truth aside one thing is clear. The USSR had no experience in information wars and this let US government proclaim it ‘Evil Empire’, taking public attention off the protests against American missiles in Europe.
No doubt, ODVZ-80 kids respect Andropov and interest in his controversial personality. Yuri Andropov was born on June 15th, 1914 in a small Kazak village close to Mozdok and never in his life was he keen on luxury (which was quite opposite to Brezhnev). With his two unfinished high-schools he was an educated and a knowing man, conservative in a good way, still ready to accept well-planned reforms and innovations. In short he possessed the features that ODVZ-80 find personally essential. Above all Andropov was a decent poet, an art and classic music connoisseur and spoke several languages. He died on February 9th, 1984 which caused sincere and deep grief in the whole country.
To keep the success of demographic policy, in 1984 it was decided to introduce maternity benefits. Pregnant women could also take a 3-year care leave. The peak of Demographic EXplosion of 1980’s was registered in 1987 with 2.23 integral birth coefficient. Back that time Soviet Russia belonged to a number of world leaders on this point, with only Ireland, Romania, Soviet Estonia, Soviet Moldavia and Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia ahead.
Just a simple example for easier understanding – when the author was at primary school there were 14 (!) classes of 35 people for each grade. And there was a time when 3500 pupils attended this ordinary school in one of many neighborhoods of a million-strong city to the east of the Volga River. In the beginning of 90’s all of us had to study in three shifts putting the quality of education aside.
A growth of birth rate in 1982-1987 came as a result of moving ‘planned’ kids to earlier dates (we can’t deny common-sense materialism of Soviet citizens), but the average amount of kids in a family didn’t increase. Though it’s known that a family should have at least 3 children to provide a stable growth of population in a country. However, forced industrialization and urbanization in Soviet Union caused rapid and tragic abandonment of rural settlements, where large families were a common thing. In cities a family with three kids was considered more of an exception than a rule probably since 1970’s.
The times have changed but Russia couldn’t realize it entirely inheriting soviet demographic policy of 80’s without any adjustments that is pretty senseless nowadays. It’s a shame, but we are most likely to appeal to not-exactly-positive experience of ‘golden billion’ countries migration policy. With a clear message – if you don’t want to spawn leave it to Arabs and Turks, Africans and Chinese or whoever. When not having a progressive development doctrine a country isn’t able to attract any ‘qualified’ migrants, i.e. Hindu IT-specialists, Dutch farmers, Brazilian football players and American managers. The ODVZ-80 doctrine has an ambition to become a reasonable alternative to any existing models of development in the near future. The problem is complicated and multi-sided and it has to be solved by us and those who come after.
Some older compatriots indirectly share this opinion. A certain Mr. Mikhail Delyagin, former adviser to Russia’s President Yeltsin, in his a little tendentious book ‘Mankind Drive. Globalization and World Crisis’ claims: ‘The first unbeaten generation of nobility brought up Pushkin and Decembrists. The first unbeaten post-revolution generation will bring Russia prosperity’. Igor Bunin, political scientist, says: ‘Before Revolution of 1917 a man’s mind had to split between Christianity and Paganism, which were pretty much combined. During Soviet years a man had to think in two opposite ways. A new generation has no problems of such kind; its representative is much more complete and whole-hearted’.
At the same time my former employer (a nomad, a yogi, in short - quite a strange fellow, ‘made in 1966’, making his living with management consulting and yacht building in Hong Kong) once told me: ‘Nothing will change in this country until you form the establishment – in your 50’s, having learnt from all your mistakes, having come through water and fire’. I think that’s in fact the way it’s going to be. It just takes some time.
If you ask The Splinters (ODVZ-80) about their attitude to Time the answer will be simple – ‘no future, no past and no present’. Time only exist as a nonrenewable resource that needs to be used right. To create future it’s not enough just to ‘know your past’ and ‘live in present’ – one has to understand the essence of Time itself. Probably we, who were shaken so well in the first 25 years of life, understand it better than anyone else in the country.
Just imagine how many ‘atmosphere pressure’ drops we’ve carried: first – ingenuous childhood in a country with progressing stagnation that led to its agony and the end, a country we’ll never be able to forget. Next – ingenuous boyhood in criminalized 90’s, when the biggest splinter of motherland lost 16 million people, both unborn and passed away before their time. That period ended with default of 1998 and NATO bombardments on Yugoslavia in 1999. Terrorist attacks in Moscow in fall 1999 hardly touched or surprised us.
Knotted youth of ‘zero decade’, beginning of neo-barbarism epoch (in global sense), Putin’s stabilization (in local sense), creation of ODVZ-80 doctrine (in peripheral one)… the point of reference, the main event of our lives is marked with a pair of numbers – 9/11. If thоse airliners beheading Manhattan towers weren’t for real they would be worth imagining, being replicated and distributed as a perfect demo of an idiotism set in our best of all possible worlds. It was an event of extraordinary significance. Most people, however, don’t even realize as much of all its nuances as we do. We’ll get back to it later.
Pretty symbolic though not so noticed came a submersion of ‘Mir’ orbital station in Pacific Ocean in 2001. Some more things not to be forgotten: USA aggression against Iraq (the third in 12 years) broadcasted live in March 2003 and Beslan school №1 in September 2004. The latest affairs in the country and world are thought over by us quickly and with no excessive sentimentality.
In short, The Splinters (ODVZ-80) don’t care for heaven or hell – not only we’ve survived and keep surviving in this endless ‘time of changes’, that pragmatic Chinese always try to avoid so much. It’s us who will make the real changes not just simulacrums – with no fuss, secretly and step by step. And we’re not going just to sing about changes like Viktor Tsoy did.
Fractal mind, ambivalence, flexibility, reasonable extremity, sophisticated pedantry, every-day austerity, dark optimism, intensive pragmatism, functional nihilism (I kindly ask you not to mix it up with cynicism, individualism or other solipsism stuff) – here are the basic points of our pop-doctrine, that by the way doesn’t give answers to all the questions. We are simply able to ask the right questions rightly, which is enough so far. To be continued in the following chapters of our lives.
But why Splinters? Because we are sharp and uncomfortable as reality itself. We are against tolerance that almost became a synonym to irresponsibility, against shape lacking meaning and laced razzle-dazzles instead of clear messages. We only care about The Essence, the ultimate truth that is impossible to mix up with anything else. There’s no other way in the world overloaded with useless information. Above all, in these 20 something years we were scattered around the planet with a blast wave and numerous social disasters. We really want to bunch the flocks and packs, but we are fighting on our own and thus it’s not a guarantee we’ll withstand. We lost innocence ten years before we learnt carnal pleasures. We were thrown ashore of life in tough conditions and with no illusions.
Majority of those 80’s-born don’t really care about self-identification. This lets some persons, brought up with ‘Soyuz’ in their heads, do more than it’s allowed. Holier-than-thou, they call us ‘hipsters’, ‘consumers’, ‘generation Z’ or above mentioned ‘the first unbeatens’. But who was beaten before us? Which letter will be given to the stair-steppers of Kolya Voronov? Who are all these people from ‘Afisha’ and some other superficial lifestyle-magazines to judge about smth more than ‘cultural events’ and express their opinion on minor stuff? Alas, there are no well thought-out answers.
It’s unacceptable that people who first imposed their primitive and stereotyped world-view on most of us now try to classify us with a demonstrative despite. They try to accuse us of non-believing in their flat bullshit. But we are fed up! It’s enough. Right now 15% of Russian population are people born in 80’s. Now, whether they want it or not, they are unable to give us their dead-born stuff they found somewhere, brought undigested in their beaks and tried to spit up to us. Really, enough. We feathered out long ago. And woke up.
Here quite adorable interview with Andrei Love-Markov is. To make a reading of that more interesting I'd like to say this Russian boy became today the first artist in ex-USSR countries who made 100.000 myspace friends. Aww... yesterday he even outflew in this respect the world famous t.A.T.u band!
Before I begin on more detailed questions, your profile has your birth date and death date, what is the reason behind this?
Well it’s the reminder and the motive to get hurry with achieving my goals. Rather important component of ALM legend. Having sent with mini-capsule spacecraft by the scientists of his home planet Earth the Greatest (which was going to explode a few millenniums ago) he landed here onto Earth-69, then instantly was born by ordinary man and wife of him in small rural settlement right in the central part of Eurasian continent. It was a sunny Saturday morning on June 18th 1983 yet the whole two dozen years cycles passed till Andrei Love-Markov woken in my body up in summer 2007. And in a dozen ones he is to leave this planet. Jus dunno whether I’d have to follow him in March 2020.
Do you play any musical instruments and where and what do you use for recording in studio?
I think only people do matter, the rest is blah-blahs. People are the finest music instruments… yet play them never!
What you specifically look for when you collab a song with another artist on myspace?
Due to internet there are so many limitations yet no borders! Well I look for people not just music. Yeah, I look for friends and lovers!
How many songs have you written?
Now I have 60 songs and overdubs, reedits and remixes. And I have the same quantity in mind so next few years I would be inexhaustible.
You have very humorous videos and pictures, what gives you the inspiration at the time of filming or taking the photos?
As Cat Power sang the ‘love and communication’ do. That’s all. The most amazing thing for me is to perform my shits in one’s bedroom to a dozen of best friends and see them laughing and dancing!
Do you have any siblings? If so, how do they react to your music, and are your parents supportive?
My parents don’t know so far. But they suspect! My younger brother loves a half of my stuff while ruthlessly criticizes the rest of that. And he’s quite right in that the music must be catchy and simple.
Do you plan on having children?
Yeah! Extremely wanna have three sons! The elder one, for instance, would be girlie favourite and starship captain!
Have you ever been in love?
I hope I haven’t yet, ha-ha! In case of love I’m kind of delivery boy so almost never consume that myself.
I read in other interview you hate the music and the sex. Care to elaborate to these new readers?
Okay, let’s see. This is quite simple. Everything I do jus ain’t about music. It’s about songs and storytelling on laborious life of a little human who considers music just as a relief not entertainment. Even songs not music that’s what helps him to survive, to go on telling story of his life and, probably, to rich a simple majesty of human being. Music as itself is fork and spoon while it is The Essence that’s a dish!
As for sex the truth is freaking: being primary value in modern culture and contemporary pop culture, sex in fact became the synonym of death, the instrument of soft genocide in case of all defective societies like Bulgaria’s and Poland’s, Russia’s and Ukraine’s et cetera. Sex now is religion of all miserable people under Sun. Now it’s just a mass destruction weapon at its best. The more than sex and music I jus hate phantasm of so-called ‘freedom’ only. And the only alternative is carnal love and Love in general. So ALM is one more prophet of eternal verities.
You have a terrific article on the 1980's generation of Russians. I highly suggest people to take a look, in the meantime can you give your fans and readers a brief synopsis of The 1980’s Demographic EXplosion Splinters (ODVZ-80) doctrine?
Every breath is regular. It’s all the same. In article I described the common mental features of the generation, told about facts of world’s and Russia’s history which affect us the most and carefully assumed that only ODVZ-80 pop doctrine would save our country from death in perspective. Yeah, doctrine is kinda pop yet that’s because we’re gonna beat our enemies understanding them first and applying their own weaponry second. As we prefer ancient Chinese philosophy to European one. By the way because of unsigned status I have no fans… friends only!
Give us a peek into your latest project?
There are a few of them. First of all I’m in the process of making anti-rap LP called ‘RUSSIA’S LAST KEWLBOY’ since February. The beats are produced by my friends from Italy and France, United States and Russia. Besides I prepare new release which titled ‘UNSIGNED. REMIXED’. It would be outfit of recent ‘UNSIGNED KEWLNESS CONTEST’ which 20 producers from all the USA and Europe took part in. The genre spectrum is from dubstep and drum’n’bass to noise pop and progressive rock.
I will be frank with you, your vocals, ALM, are not so great. Yet you are making a large impact as Russia’s Unsigned №1 artist, how do feel about this?
First of all I do avoid singing because I’m shy to sing for real. Jus because I know I’m simple guy came up from a crowd. Yet I plan to work on vocals with a tutor soon. As for being unsigned it’s new era, genuine zeitgeist. I think today’s opportunities allow every person to succeed in every aspect of pop culture without slavery under majors or imaginary sincerity of indie labels. Now we have a lot of good examples of how to manage your self while being well-known worldwide. It’s YOU that guy who must decide who you are! To my mind contemporary artist dies when get signed. After that I’d never listen to his stuff with same interest as before. And watch out! If you are unsigned YET it’s fake as well. You should be unsigned for good! Jus like ALM.
If you don't want to be signed as an artist, how do you propose to sell your music and by pass the red tape of the music industry?
I’m natural born bootstrapper and I know what austerity is. And I’m quite sure I chose true way from stars of Unexplored Galaxies to hell of human life and back. Now it’s time to make a step towards more serious level of my project’s development. So you may consider this an official appeal to everyone interested. To get the global fame on a greater scale but stay unsigned I’m starting to look for a person who’d like to support my expansion materially. Be sure I don’t mean heartless venture investors. I prefer to call such kind of person somewhat like business angel. Jus because a volume of supposed financial help is really small, especially in compare to many other artists, it would be an oral agreement. Yet I’ve recently got the second diploma (on crisis management) so to write my simple business plan would hardly be a problem. The only condition is being like-minded person for real. Well the faster I find my business angel the faster I go to ALM Odyssey 2010 through Western hemisphere and visit most of countries and cities where thousands myspace friends of mine live.
You are nearing or by the time this interview is, 100.000 myspace friends, what do you have to say to them?
I wouldn’t lie I love them all, ha-ha! But, dears, please remember only one thing: ALM is pretty much more interesting than you think of that because ain’t shown whole potential of making you wet so far! Yeah, I wanna meet you in my real life. Well see you soon!
Are you a late sleeper or early morning type of guy?
I’m gonna sleep enough just in my grave! :)
Diana Roder, September 2nd 2009.
Love-Markov (WANNA BE MY BUSINESS ANGEL?)'s Friend Space (Top 39)
Love-Markov (WANNA BE MY BUSINESS ANGEL?) has 118349 friends.
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